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PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAY 



CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION: 



AND ALSO ON 



ANIMAL FASCINATION, OR CHARMING. 



BY RUFUS BLAKEMAN, M. D. 



" It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion 
as is unworthy of Him ; for the one is unbelief, the other is contumely." 

Lord Bacon. 



NEW YORK : 
D. APPLETON & CO., BROADWAY. 

NEW HAVEN, S. BABCOCK. 

1849. 




tA 



H> 



Q, 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, 

By Kufus Blakeman, M. D., 

in the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of Connecticut, 



PREFACE, 



It was not the original design of the author to offer the 
following work to the public. It was undertaken with 
the view to note his own opinions, and such facts, derived 
from reading and reflection, as were deemed demonstra- 
tive of a general tendency to a more ready belief in the 
incomprehensible and the marvelous, rather than in phe- 
nomena susceptible of explanation by reason, aided by a 
disciplined exercise of the subordinate senses. Subse- 
quently, however, it occurred to him that their dissemina- 
tion might possibly have some influence in leading to an 
analytical examination of various popular errors emanating 
from this source, which have been most detrimental to hu- 
man progress, and have essentially retarded mankind in 
their efforts to acquire the greatest happiness of which 
their nature is susceptible. 

If such should be the result, (though but in a small de- 
gree,) it is confidently believed that much will be effected 
toward the eradication of evils originating from credulity 
and superstition. There is little doubt that the baleful 
errors originating from these sources have mainly been 
perpetuated by traditional authority, or the habitual qui- 
escence in which the mind is too prone to indulge, when 
the various external phenomena are presented for its con- 



4 PREFACE. 

templation and reception ; and, therefore, that attention 
to their deformity is only required for their correction. 

The author has not the arrogance to claim, that he is 
presenting a mass of original views to those who have 
read or thought extensively on the subjects considered. It 
has been his principal design to present, in a succinct 
form, opinions and many important facts dispersed through 
a variety of volumes, which a majority of society either 
want the leisure or interest to peruse ; but who, notwith- 
standing, have a personal interest that errors perpetuated 
by such inattention, and which are most detrimental to 
their welfare, should be corrected, and thereby their evils 
become dissipated. 

It has been the author's object to allude to the mental 
origin of the various popular superstitions that have ex- 
tensively prevailed among mankind at different periods, 
and briefly to illustrate the physiological and mental in- 
fluences by which they have been fostered and strength- 
ened — often to such a degree as to assume the direction 
of popular belief and the general sentiment of mankind 
during their usurpations. 

Although the several subjects discussed have been ably 
investigated by various writers, it is not within the au- 
thor's knowledge, that the different forms of credulity and 
superstition of which he treats, have been presented in 
connection, accompanied by a reference to the physiolo- 
gical and pathological principles upon which they are 
manifestly dependent. It is true that the physical origin 
of mental delusion has been repeatedly investigated ; but 
it has, generally, been in a manner too metaphysical to 



PREFACE. 



be readily comprehended by all, and, as before remarked, 
too formidable from extent to admit of ready access by the 
public generally. He therefore hopes, by the publication 
of this manual, to present the outlines of the subject in 
such accessible form as may invite perusal, and thereby 
incite some to a further investigation of truths, upon a 
correct understanding of which, it is conceived, refined 
civilization can alone be based. 

It was the wish of the author so to popularize his 
treatise, by entirely excluding technical language, as to 
render it more readily intelligible to every reader. But 
as it has been his design to trace the errors, originating 
in the subjects discussed, to their physiological and pa- 
thological origin, he has been compelled, occasionally, to 
resort to the use of the technicalities of science, with the 
view as well to abridge in diction as to facilitate the ob- 
ject contemplated. He would, therefore, present this as 
an apology to the non-professional reader for the occa- 
sional reference to, and introduction of these. It is, 
however, hoped that the present liberal dissemination of 
physiological and other sciences, with the explanations 
generally given in connection with their use, will in some 
degree obviate the difficulties which he is aware must 
arise from their employment. 

Without pretensions to literary merit in its structure, 
the work is respectfully submitted to the public, by the 

AUTHOR. 

Greenfield Hill, September 4th, 1849. 



CONTENTS. 



SECTION I. 
Mental Origin of Credulity and Superstition, and its Influence 

on Ancient Society, 9 

SECTION II. 
Witchcraft, 47 

SECTION III. 
Dreams, ---58 

SECTION IV. 
Ghosts, 65 

SECTION V. 

Ecstacy, Trance, &c, - - - - - -. . 74 

SECTION VI. 

Empiricism and Quackery — Credulity in Medicine, - - - 103 

.SECTION VII. 
Homoeopathy, 123 

SECTION VIII. 
Mesmerism, - 161 

Essay on Animal Fascination, or Charming, .... 177 



PHILOSOPHY 



OF 



CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 



SECTION I. 

Mental Origin of Credulity and Superstition, and its 
Influence on Ancient Society. 

The remark of Lord Bacon, that "it were 
better to have' no opinion of God at all, than 
such opinion as is unworthy of Him," is most 
appropriate in its application to the various 
superstitious beliefs that have, and still, in a 
degree, sway mankind; for superstition implies 
such extravagant notions regarding the char- 
acter of Deity, that its rational contempla- 
tion is irreconcilable with such conceptions 
formed of the Author of the universe, as are 
derived from a survey of its structure. 

On the contrary, such is the influence of 
these beliefs on the mind, that they not only 
cause the character of the infinitely wise and 
rational Intelligence there delineated, to be 
graduated by a standard derived from ordi- 
2 



10 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

nary human attributes, but they often degrade 
such Being, by attributing to his character 
qualities like those presented from a survey 
of human nature in its most repulsive mani- 
festations. 

If such are the facts furnished from an ob- 
servation of the effects of credulity and super- 
stition, it is manifest that the moral and social, 
as well as the religious interests of man, require 
that their true nature should be represented in 
such a form, that the evils arising therefrom 
may be exposed, and, if possible, obliterated. 

That man is by nature a credulous being, 
requires but the proofs which history furnishes 
of his race in all the conditions in which he 
is noticed by that record. 

That he is likewise superstitious, and prone 
to allow an undue influence to the imagina- 
tion and the passions, is equally manifest from 
observation of his character, whether pre- 
sented in a state of barbarism or of civiliza- 
tion. 

The universal prevalence of these propen- 
sities, conclusively shows that, instead of 
being foreign and accidental manifesta- 
tions, they are indebted for their existence to 
the original structure of the mind itself. It 
will therefore appear, that however diverse 
may be the character of superstition and cre- 
dulity, in comparison with legitimate mental 



CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. H 

deduction, still each must have received an 
origin from the natural tendency and associa- 
tions which result from the mental organiza- 
tion. But as the former, so often fraught with 
evils to mankind, can not reasonably be im- 
puted to the Divine economy in furnishing 
endowments to man, they must necessarily be 
explained by viewing them as perverted ope- 
rations of some of the elementary principles of 
the mind, which were, no doubt, designed by 
the Creator to elevate man to the exalted po- 
sition in the universe for which he was mani- 
festly introduced into being. 

In a survey of human character, in connec- 
tion with the mental faculties, we shall find 
that all its manifestations derive their origin 
from, and are dependent upon, specific ele- 
ments of the mind; and that, however great 
the diversity exhibited in human character, 
it is to be referred to a varied operation of 
a few elementary principles, constituting the 
entire mental organization. 

Man is so constituted that he is by nature a 
social being. Hence a large portion of his 
happiness is made dependent upon his asso- 
ciation with his fellow man in society. He 
would be unable to attain this boon of the so- 
cial state, were he not endowed with the dis- 
position to repose confidence in his fellow 
man, with whom he is necessarily associated 
in his various relations. 



12 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

Disruptions of society must occur from the 
antagonistic character of its elements, and its 
existence would inevitably be but a state of 
destructive conflict, were man not endowed 
with faculties for its maintenance. The hap- 
piness which he derives from the social state 
would be annihilated, and even governments 
could not be sustained, was he not by nature 
gifted with an inclination to confide in his fel- 
low beings. Such must inevitably have been 
his gloomy condition, had the mind been with- 
out those elementary constituents which ori- 
ginate the social affinities, and prompt to a 
sympathetic amalgamation and confidence in 
the mental affection of its associates. 

Man, by nature, is endowed with an eager 
propensity for novelty, and an ardent desire to 
acquire a knowledge of his external relations 
in the varied conditions of his existence. As 
a result of its exercise, his social and physical 
relations become extended and ameliorated, 
and he is enabled to protect himself against the 
hostile agencies by which he is surrounded. 

Not content with the knowledge acquired 
by the investigation of the immediate objects 
of sense, this passion for the novel and singu- 
lar, influences the mind to pass beyond these, 
and to attempt a discovery of the character, 
as well of objects concealed in the remote 
recesses of infinite space, as of that of the 



CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 13 

invisible agencies which he is conscious are 
in perpetual operation around him. 

The conclusions of reason regarding the 
Architect of nature, have unquestionably con- 
tributed essential aid in the construction of 
the vague notions which superstition presents, 
relative to his character and attributes; and 
therefore reason has, in a large degree, been 
instrumental in effecting a degradation of the 
mental faculties, which it was its legitimate 
office to elevate and ennoble. 

In its contemplation of the works of na- 
ture, natural reason has ever detected, through- 
out their entire structure, the most manifest 
evidence of a wise designing Architect, whose 
attributes, from their vast extent, baffled its 
power of comprehension. From a reluctance, 
however, to abandon a research into the na- 
ture of a Beiru whose existence is there so 
manifestly demonstrated, notwithstanding its 
inadequate powers, it has ever been inclined, 
through the promptings of its natural arro- 
gance and inquisitiveness, t<> estimate and 
define the character and attributes of such 
exalted Intelligence, by a standard furnished 
by observation on the character of the limited 
intelligences with which it was familiar. 

As might be rationally presumed, from an 
estimate of the insufficient data on which its 
conclusions were based, unaided reason has 

2* 



14 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

ever depicted the character of the Creative 
Intelligence with the imperfections incident to 
human nature ; and thus, instead of bestowing 
due homage on the great First Cause, has 
rendered its adorations to the factitious etch- 
ings of its own conception. 

Hence it will be found, that among the va- 
rious tribes and communities of man, unen- 
lightened by revelation, the respective im- 
aginative divinities which they worship, have 
ever been, represented as possessing endow- 
ments bearing a similitude to ordinary hu- 
man nature, and with a character and attributes 
varying in correspondence w 7 ith the national 
public sentiment of each community; with 
the distinction, mainly, that such divinities 
have been depicted with powers greatly en- 
hanced over their human prototypes, and 
generally of a capriciousness of affections 
bearing a relation with their superior abil- 
ity for gratification. Possessing, therefore, 
such peculiar structure, and holding a posi- 
tion in the universe amid such subtle influ- 
ences as are presented in the operation of 
the natural laws, which the senses are totally 
inadequate to define, it might be expected 
that the mind, when injudiciously abandoning 
its legitimate province, without an extra-natu- 
ral light, like that of revelation, should be ship- 
wrecked amid the errors into which it must 
in such a condition be plunged. 



CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 15 

Such, it is conceived, are the principal 
mental influences which have been instru- 
mental in leading the mind to a degradation 
of its own innate capabilities, and caused a 
depreciation of the standard of human na- 
ture, which, under a more auspicious direc- 
tion, might have been in an uninterrupted 
progress of elevation. 

These elementary affections of the mind, es- 
sential alike to maintain the social and progres- 
sive state of man, when subservient to a duly 
disciplined reason, are most effective in the 
elevation of human character. But through 
an unfortunate perversion of their objects it is 
unquestionable, that the same original tenden- 
cies have been productive of that morbid 
credulity and superstition which have ever 
depressed the intellect of man, and been pro- 
ductive of a large portion of the woes and 
evils which his race has endured. 

All assemblages of man in society, whether 
savage or civilized, have ever been more or 
less victims to credences which derive no sup- 
port from the legitimate conclusions of the rea- 
soning faculty ; nor are they even sustained by 
evidence afforded by. the unbiased operation of 
the senses. Such credences, being deductions 
from data which have not been sufficiently 
subjected to the scrutiny of the senses, are too 
apt to assume the guidance of the conduct of 



16 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

their devotees, by the influence of the erro- 
neous standards which they furnish; and 
hence, to mould the character in accordance 
with the false basis which has been assumed. 

That propensity of the mind which leads 
it to an investigation of its external relations, 
embarrassed by the inability of reason to ex- 
plain all the mysterious phenomena with 
which it is connected in the universe around 
it, such as those of electricity, affinity, gravi- 
tation, earthquakes, &c, has caused it to attri- 
bute such to the agency of invisible personali- 
ties with which its destinies were intimately 
connected, and upon which it was dependent 
for a large portion of the happiness which it 
enjoys, or the misery which it suffers. 

It is to be presumed, that during the suc- 
cessive periods of the existence of the hu- 
man race, the notions of the untaught mind 
regarding its external relations, have been 
extremely crude and indefinite, and that the 
character of its view r s regarding; these would 
be such as the passions, influenced by a pro- 
lific imagination, would create. The char- 
acter of the human mind has doubtless ever 
possessed a uniformity in the entire species, 
and it is a legitimate presumption, that the in- 
fluences derived from external agencies would 
be attended with a uniformity of results in 
every period of the history of the race. It is 



CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 17 

therefore presumable, that the mind, in its un- 
cultivated state, from such similarity of im- 
pressions from without, should be inspired to 
a uniformity of conclusions, and that similar 
opinions and systems would result from a con- 
templation of external nature. 

It is probable, that in all periods of the 
earth's existence in its present form, the va- 
rious causes of phenomena now manifested 
were in active operation ; and that such phe- 
nomena have been, in different degrees, ex- 
hibited to man in every condition in which 
his race has been found since its origin. In- 
deed, it is geologically shown, that many of 
the most potent agencies of nature have been 
in much greater activity than at the present 
period. The numerous extinct volcanoes 
discovered in every country, the visible and 
historic disruptions of the earth's surface, and 
the upheavings of mountains and islands, show 
conclusively, that subterranean fires have dis- 
played an energy in ancient periods, com- 
pared with which, their action at the present 
time gives but a pigmy representation. Con- 
sequently, therefore, their attendant phenom- 
ena, — earthquakes, meteoric displays, and ter- 
restrial concussions, — must have inspired the 
ancient spectator with terrific sensations far 
superior to similar displays now witnessed. It 
is easy to conceive, that in the absence of a 



18 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

science to investigate the causes of such phe- 
nomena, the minds of men must have been 
inspired with the extremes of awe, super- 
stitious dread, and apprehension; and that 
they would naturally be constrained to impute 
to the most terrific invisible agencies, effects 
so manifest and so disproportionate to the 
action of the physical forces with which they 
were familiar. 

No explanation would be so readily sug- 
gested, and so accordant with the excited im- 
agination, as that which should refer such 
manifestation of force to powerful demons, 
who invisibly sported with the destinies of 
man, and held control of the elements around 
them. 

Entertaining such belief, derived from such 
manifest display of super-human power, it 
would naturally follow, that minor phenome- 
na, and even the mental and moral exhibitions, 
should be referred to the same, or to inferior 
agents, who invisibly influenced the organic 
structure, as well as the elements upon which 
it was dependent. 

If, as has been premised, such crude deduc- 
tions are referable to an elementary structure 
of the mind, it is to be presumed, that in the 
infancy of the human race, and in all sub- 
sequent societies deprived of the aids afforded 
by a scientific knowledge of terrestrial phe- 



CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 19 

nomena, credulity, and the most absurd su- 
perstition should abound, to a degree, that 
the character of individuals and communities 
should receive an impress accordant with the 
fallacious systems which they originate. 

With a mind, like that of man, too im- 
becile to define its true position in the uni- 
verse, yet prone to speculate upon, and to 
generalize the most intricate phenomena pre- 
sented to its observation, it is not surprising 
that the fictions of the imagination, in its un- 
tutored state, should be embraced as realities, 
and that the happiness of entire communities 
should be materially affected by the delusive 
systems which were embraced. 

Yet notwithstanding the imperfections inci- 
dent to the human mind, few would be the 
evils emanating therefrom, was reason allowed 
its legitimate sway in the analysis of the im- 
pressions derived from the objects of sense ; 
or, at least, was it permitted to direct the ap- 
plication of the available sciences which have 
been cultivated in all civilized communities. 

It has been presumed, that credulity and 
superstition are the elementary products 
of the human mind, influenced by exterior 
causes by which it is surrounded. But such 
would necessarily be the indefinite character 
of the original mental impulse, that little would 
result from its effects upon the simple and the 



20 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

ignorant, but a vague impression of terror and 
apprehension, inspired by a sense of proximity 
with active and powerful agents, whose affec- 
tions towards them, they were incapable of 
defining. 

The general prevalence, popularity, and 
influence of magic, in the civilized states of 
antiquity, renders it extremely probable, that 
it was the most effectual instrument by which 
the people were governed, and by which, 
in a great degree, their national tranquility 
and power were sustained. 

It is not to be presumed, that in this, the 
palmy period of magic, its import, like the 
modern acceptation of the term, was that of a 
low and vulgar art. Its history, as exhibited 
in Egypt, Persia, and Greece, and likewise in 
their predecessor and cotemporary nations, 
where it existed, would indicate that it was a 
name which embraced most of the natural 
and religious sciences of which they could 
boast; and that its professors, instead of being 
contemned like the modern juggler, were of 
no less distinguished consideration, than are 
men of eminent scientific attainments at the 
present period. 

Hence in Egypt, will be found its king as- 
sembling his court magicians, to vie with 
Moses in the miracles which he wrought 
The Persian magi were among the most im- 






CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 21 

portant actors in matters relating to the state, 
as well as religion. In Greece, likewise, 
magic held eminent sway in their conduct of 
matters of civil government, as well as their 
religious ceremonies, under the direction of 
their priests, soothsayers, and oracular respon- 
ses. Indeed, it is probable that the most of an- 
cient science was concealed within the vail of 
magic; and that its sublime results were prin- 
cipally presented to the vulgar, as demonstra- 
tions of the will of their deities, whose terrible 
attributes and interested regards it was de- 
signed to represent to them. 

From such view it will appear, that ancient 
magic and natural science were but synony- 
mous appellations; and that the former pre- 
sents a formidable aspect, only by the ob- 
scurity and mystery through which its facts 
were demonstrated to the multitude, ignorant 
of the artifices employed. 

There can be but little doubt, that the char- 
acter which the diverse systems of superstition 
have assumed among the various tribes of 
mankind, has been modeled by the devices of 
the crafty and intelligent, who from observation 
on the human character, as well as the causes 
of active external phenomena, were led to 
cherish and systematize a delusion, in which 
they beheld an instrumentality for effecting 
their selfish and ambitious aspirations, 

3 



22 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

Hence, by the exercise of magic, the rare 
and singular manifestations of the natural 
laws, and doubtless many scientific experi- 
ments of an impressive character, were exhib- 
ited to the ignorant multitude, as miracles 
and prodigies, significant that a divinity was 
the spectator and immediate rewarder of their 
actions. 

From such sources, doubtless, emanated 
the systems of theology which have ever held 
in abject servitude the rude portions of man; 
all of which, on analysis, will be found to 
exhibit the devices of crafty inventors, adapt- 
ed to the accomplishment of their designed 
usurpations. Such analysis will likewise show, 
that both nature and art have been assidu- 
ously investigated, with the object of deriving 
agencies to render their systems complicated 
and impenetrable, and to render mystical a 
texture, whose power alone was derived from 
its incomprehensibility. 

Not content with the proofs which these 
devised systems of theology derived from the 
more manifest operations of the natural laws, 
such as earthquakes, meteors, volcanic erup- 
tions, and thunder storms, their inventors have 
not failed to adduce the less imposing, and the 
apparently erratic manifestations of these laws, 
in corroboration of the impress effected by the 
former. Hence, the comet, experimental phi- 



CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 23 

losophy, the vital laws, manifesting the inexpli- 
cable animal instincts, and the monstrosities 
occasional in the animal and vegetable king- 
doms, have been exhibited to the astonished 
imaginations of those less familiar with the 
capabilities, and apparent abnormities of na- 
ture's operations, as divine interpositions, to 
impel skepticism to yield its assent to institu- 
tions which the gods regarded with special 
care, and to sustain which they manifested an 
unceasing and jealous interest. 

Such is a portion of the evidence which 
was adduced to confirm the institutions and 
systems of ancient states, and such the expe- 
dients employed to bind the credulous to their 
observance. Many others might be enumer- 
ated, as combustible natural gases, issuing 
from mines, caverns, and springs, in all coun- 
tries; the various nervous diseases, as epilepsy, 
hysteria, &c; the effects of poisons, epidem- 
ics, and epizootics; spectral illusions ; and, in 
short, all the unwonted phenomena whose 
causes were obscure and impenetrable. 

But sufficient has been noticed to demon- 
strate that the inventors and expounders of 
the various ancient religious systems, were 
adepts in the science of human nature, and 
that in the structure of their fabrics such 
adaptation was regarded as should ensure to 
them its control, 



24 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

Although knowledge and civilization have, 
in a degree, dissipated these erroneous systems, 
by the development of the causes of very ma- 
ny of the natural phenomena, by which they 
were sustained, yet with the light which these 
afford, we shall still witness the mind swayed 
by the dreamy figments of the imagination, 
and groping in mists, which a due exercise of 
reason would speedily dissipate. 

It may appear surprising, that a being like 
man, so eminently endowed, beyond all other 
members of the animal kingdom, with intellec- 
tual faculties, should be so generally swayed 
by the illusions of sense and imagination ; 
or that he should view the ordinary phe- 
nomena of nature, most of which are suscep- 
tible of an analysis by reason, with dread 
and apprehension. But, in explanation, it 
is to be considered that reason, as exhibited 
in the infancy of society, is adequate to ex- 
plain but a portion of the effects of the natu- 
ral laws; and that it is rarely exercised, except 
to provide for immediate wants. It need not 
therefore surprise us, who, with the superior 
light of science, are often baffled in our inves- 
tigations, that mankind in their unenlightened 
condition should view phenomena of an un- 
wonted character as the operation of invisible 
beings, who had the power to control their 
destinies for good or for evil. Nor need we 
be surprised, that their imaginations, excited 






CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 25 

by various impenetrable mysteries presented 
for consideration, should depict the elements 
as peopled by a diversity of active intelli- 
gences, whose affections were represented as 
either friendly or adverse, as their influence 
conduced to promote or obstruct the objects 
of their pursuit 

It is doubtless this incapacity of the in- 
tellect to explain the ordinary operations of 
natural causes, which has originated the in- 
finity of superstitions that have held such des- 
potic sway over ignorant minds, and permit- 
ted the imagination to beguile the senses to 
an adoption of the illusions which its ever 
prolific pencil furnishes for their considera- 
tion. When such crudities obtain possession 
of public sentiment, it is in no degree surpris- 
ing, that individual happiness, or even that of 
communities, should become a sacrifice to 
their influence, by subjugating their minds to 
such capricious divinities as a prolific fancy 
might personify, when stimulated by instant 
hopes or fears. 

It is a trait of the human mind, to contem- 
plate with interest whatever is presented to it 
as deviating from ordinary natural events. 
Hence, whatever is novel or strange, or what- 
ever affects the senses through an obscure me- 
dium, arouses the passions, and if incapable of 
being represented by distinct sensations, such 
3* 



26 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

exaggerated coloring is presented by the im- 
agination, that the mind becomes excited to a 
sense of wonder or marvelousness. Such is 
the mental condition induced by these indefi- 
nite sensations, that the judgments thereon are 
illusive and unsatisfactory, and the actions 
consequent thereto, are accordant with the er- 
roneous impression. It is in this state, that the 
imagination, by awaking in the mind a sense 
of dread and apprehension, stimulates to decis- 
ions which calm and unbiased reason would 
not fail to reject as monstrous and absurd. 

It is not designed here to exhibit the gross 
credulity and superstitions which actuate the 
savage tribes of the human family. The dis- 
gusting narrative would be nearly commensu- 
rate with the history of each ; and it is pre- 
sumed that the monstrous detail is familiar to 
all. It is rather the design of the present un- 
dertaking, to allude to the character and ex- 
tent of credulity and superstition, in more 
civilized states ; and to show, that by foster- 
ing the mental propensity alluded to, it is ren- 
dered more than probable, that the wise and 
the learned of antiquity, were enabled to im- 
pose upon their less enlightened countrymen, 
the fabulous theology, which became so ex- 
tensively blended with the character, and 
held such extensive swav over nearlv the en- 
tire sum of human action in that remote period. 



CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 27 

By such view it will appear probable, that the 
sole object of its invention was that of subdu- 
ing the passions of the ignorant, by means of 
a factitious supernatural machinery, that they 
might become the instruments by which to 
accomplish the objects, and thereby promote 
the interests, of their tyrants and oppressors. 

It is designed, in connection with this allu- 
sion to presumed ancient frauds, to exhibit 
some of the prevailing modern phantasies, 
which if less efficient in subjecting the mind to 
a temporal despotism, evince that reason is still 
far from having obtained its legitimate domin- 
ion over the imagination and the passions. 

In ancient Greece, the most enlightened, 
accomplished, and in some respects, the most 
superstitious nation of antiquity, as well as in 
Egypt, Persia and Rome, there is great rea- 
son for believing that science, instead of be- 
ing applied by its possessors for the improve- 
ment of the mental condition of the masses of 
their population, was made the instrument of 
inculcating the most gross superstitions, with 
the view to enhance the interests of the deceiv- 
ers. Legislators and philosophers appear to 
have applied the sciences but to subdue the 
mental faculties, and to stupify the reason of 
the multitude, that they might thereby be made 
more obedient slaves and subjects ; whilst the 
priests, as pretended interpreters of the will of 



128 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

the heavenly powers, were the professional 
instruments of their mental degradation. 

That ancient science, like the modern, was 
in a degree applied to the improvement of 
the arts and economy of life, cannot be doubt- 
ed. Nor does it admit of less doubt, that it 
was likewise employed to delude the minds of 
the people, and to subjugate them, by a pre- 
tended supernatural interposition, to the will 
and ambition of their tyrants. In pronoun- 
cing a judgment thus severe against ancient 
science generally, it must be admitted, that 
the sages and philosophers whom we have 
been taught to venerate for their sublime ef- 
forts in the cause of wisdom and virtue, are 
made obnoxious to the charge of a conni- 
vance, if not of participation, in the stupen- 
dous frauds devised for the degradation of 
the human mind. This implication of the 
honesty of ancient philosophy, will doubtless 
be viewed by its admirers as little less than a 
wanton attack upon the character of those 
writers, whose intellectual efforts, it must be 
admitted, have essentially aided in the de- 
velopment of the dignity of human nature, 
and whose intellects have stood as prominent 
lights in the darkness of the past ; guiding suc- 
cessive generations along the path of progres- 
sive civilization and refinement. With a 
view therefore to qualify, and indeed extenu- 



CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 29 

ate the odium of the implied charge here made 
against the ancient sages, it may be stated in 
their justification, that their moral codes were 
in a great degree based upon national expe- 
diency ; and that they lived at a period when 
the art of governing the passions of the mul- 
titude, by enlightening their reason, was un- 
known. It will therefore appear manifest, 
that the moral codes to which modern society 
is amenable, cannot with propriety be applied 
as a standard by which to impeach the hon- 
esty, or arraign the motives, of heathen phi- 
losophers. 

But it may be repeated, that whatever 
might have been the real belief of the sages 
and legislators of Greece and Rome, relative 
to their pretended invisible agencies, it is cer- 
tain that they were, in a great degree, instru- 
mental in multiplying and personating the 
superstitions constituting their theology. If 
(as it is probable) all the learned of antiquity 
contemplated their deities, for whom they in- 
culcated reverence, but as absurd and ridicu- 
lous fictions of the imagination, they doubt- 
less esteemed such pious fraud not reprehen- 
sible, nor inconsistent with their moral and 
religious duties, as conservators of the com- 
munity, which might be interposed as an al- 
ternative for restraining the turbulence of the 
multitude, by an influence over their minds 
through this medium. 



30 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

If the ignorant populace of the ancient 
states were thus deluded to a surrender of 
their inherent right to liberty, it was doubt- 
less effected by the concurrent agency of their 
wise and learned cotemporaries ; comprising 
as well their legislators and philosophers, as 
their priests and magicians. While it was the 
office of their priests to inculcate and confirm 
a belief in their pretended spiritual agencies, 
to conduct the mysteries,* and sacred rites, 
practiced in their temples, and to delineate 
the character of beings who held the control 
of their destinies, either by rewarding or af- 
flicting, with a despotism as capricious and 
instable as that of their tyrants, — the magi- 
cians, as demonstrators of their secret will, af- 
fected to display the awful power of the gods, 
to incite the popular energy in important 
emergencies, whether national or domestic. 



* The Eleusinian Mysteries appear to have been prac- 
tised as religious ceremonies, by a society which was 
most extensive in the times of antiquity, and existed for a 
very long period. Their secrets, or ceremonies, like 
those of modern Free Masonry, were guarded by the 
most formidable oaths. Death, in its most terrific form, 
with the eternal vengeance of the gods, was the punish- 
ment of those who intimated their nature to the profane. 
It has been supposed that the secrets of this society 
consisted in the arts and scientific experiments which 
were employed in the temples, to demonstrate to the un- 
initiated the acts and will of their deities. 



CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 31 

It is obvious, that in the ancient nations 
generally, a knowledge of the most ordinary 
phenomena of nature was concealed from the 
people, to operate upon their fears ; and that 
they were exhibited to them as manifesta- 
tions of the angry or complacent expression 
of the affections of their deities, in circum- 
stances in which national objects required an 
energetic demonstration of their physical en- 
ergies. To show that such was the effect 
produced by these phenomena, we need but 
instance the terrors and depressions that often 
paralyzed armies during impending battles, by 
such events as eclipses of the sun or moon, by 
earthquakes or thunder, the causes of which 
were familiar to the learned. The occurrence 
of meteoric or other extraordinary lights in the 
atmosphere ; the flight of birds of reputed good 
or bad omen, ever depressed or aroused the ar- 
dor of conflicting armies, in accordance with 
the construction given to such events, by their 
augurs or soothsayers, who affected to interpret 
to them the will of their leaders or tyrants, un- 
der the guise of a heavenly admonition. The 
particular appearances of the entrails of 
beasts, which are known to vary according 
to the state of their health ; the birth of mon- 
sters, which every physiologist of ordinary in- 
telligence, knows to be occasioned by an ar- 
rest, or exuberance of development, consist- 



32 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

ent with the occasional operation of the vital 
laws ; — these their soothsayers affected to be- 
hold as legible indications, portentous of the 
fate of armies or kingdoms. Such, now deemed 
ordinary events, were exhibited to the vulgar 
of ancient enlightened states, as miraculous 
interpositions of their fabulous gods, relative 
to impending events, such as were contem- 
plated with engrossing interest by the pub- 
lic.* 

These, as ordinary natural phenomena, by a 
concealment of their causes from the ignorant, 
were wielded by the learned, to excite and 

* The superstition of the soldiers of ancient armies 
was often available and convenient, to check their im- 
prudent ardor for hostile attacks, as well as to stimulate 
their courage when in a state of depression. To insure 
such control over their minds, augurs and soothsayers 
were necessary appendages to their expeditions, who 
often exercised greater influence, by means of their au- 
gueries, than their commanders. 

Occasionally, however, serious detriment occurred to 
expeditions, in consequence of the credulity of the sol- 
diers. No exhortations of their commanders, or attempts 
to explain to the soldiers the true character of such 
natural phenomena as eclipses, thunder, &c. could in- 
duce them to engage, previous to a propitiatory sacrifice 
to the deity, whose wrath was supposed to be thus mani- 
fested. Nicias, and many other ancient commanders, 
were compelled to forego favorable opportunities for at- 
tacking the enemy, in consequence of eclipses, or thun- 
der storms, occurring immediately preceding a contem- 
plated attack. 









CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 33 

control their passions. But in their absence, 
at periods requiring such agency, it is highly 
probable, that science was often resorted to 
for their artificial production. 

Researches into the state of ancient sci- 
ences, render it probable that physics, with 
some of the ancients, had attained a degree of 
perfection little short of that of the present 
period; and it is not unlikely, that in what are 
termed the experimental sciences, the former 
were superior, in many respects, to the latter. 
It will, therefore, be readily inferred from 
modern experience, that, artificial earthquakes, 
thunder, meteors, and other fiery and mysteri- 
ous representations, might be easily presented 
to the astonishment of a multitude, ignorant 
of the artifice, equal to that produced by the 
natural elements. The artifices and mys- 
teries which composed the rites practiced 
in the ancient temples, have perished with 
their actors and the architectural structures 
in which they were exhibited. But sufficient 
historic details of their effects upon their cred- 
ulous devotees remain, to convince even the 
tyro in modern science, that the magic of which 
these rites doubtless consisted, was in no de- 
gree superior to that practiced by the modern 
juggler, with his machinery of optical lenses, 
mirrors, magic lantern, and camera obscura, 
aided in their effects by ventriloquism. With 

4 



34 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

these instruments, and an architectural struc- 
ture as suitable as doubtless was that of the 
ancient temples, scenes might unquestiona- 
bly be displayed to a modern audience, no 
less imposing, (though with emotions of plea- 
sure, rather than veneration and (error,) than 
such as impressed the ancient devotee. 

The various prodigies related in ancient 
history, which were interpreted in a manner 
to astonish the credulous, and to arouse their 
passions, by exhibiting them as the manifesta- 
tion of the affections of some interested deity, 
and which were explained as foreshadowing 
success or disaster to states, all admit of ready 
solution, from causes of an ordinary character; 
such as the apparent speaking of beasts, stat- 
ues, &c, by the aid of ventriloquism ; the sweat- 
ing of statues, by condensation of atmospheric 
vapor, caused by inequalities of temperature, or 
by hydrostatic pressure; fountains, or streams, 
representing blood or oil,* by chemical solu- 

*The bloody appearance of brooks, fountains, consid- 
erable portions of lakes* and the ocean, together with 
occasional red snow, was frequently brought to the atten- 
tion of the ancients, and was exhibited to the credulous 
as portentous of misfortunes to states. The investiga- 
tion of the phenomenon by modern naturalists, has proved 
that such appearance is caused by the extensive propa- 
gation of an animalcular insect in such waters, sufficient 
to effect the discoloration. Many substances might be 
employed to simulate such reputed miraculous interposi- 



CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 35 

tion, and a variety of other artificial means ; 
or by the periodical generation of a species of 
aqueous animalcule, or vegetable algae, such 
as have often been witnessed by naturalists, 
as giving bloody discoloration to streams, 
and extensive portions of the ocean. The 
slightest resemblance to a pretended reality, 
would be generally adequate to convince the 
credulous observer, whose passions and im- 
agination were excited to an eagerness to wit- 
ness the novel and marvelous. A writer of 
note remarks, " every thing is a prodigy in 
the eyes of the ignorant man, who sees the 
universe only in the narrow circle of his ex- 
istence. The philosopher beholds no prodi- 
gies; he knows that a monstrous birth, or the 
sudden crumbling of the hardest rock, results 
from causes as natural as the alternate return 
of night and day." This remark may not in 
all cases hold true, as science is as yet inade- 
quate to fathom all the mysteries presented 
by the operation of the natural laws. There 
are, however, few of the extraordinary mani- 
festations of these laws, but which will admit 
of a satisfactory solution, by the observer who 
calmly investigates causes ; and where these 

tion before the ignorant, in case of a necessary emergency. 
In the case of blood colored snow, the insect was proba- 
bly conveyed into the atmosphere, by the vapor from 
which it was formed. 



36 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

are less manifest, who resorts to aids afforded 
by such analogies as ordinary experience will, 
in most cases, supply. To such it will ap- 
pear manifest, that the exhibitions of magic 
in the temples of Egypt, Persia, Greece, 
and Rome, as well as the various prodigies 
related in ancient history, which impressed 
the superstitious devotee, with the awful 
sense of a personal interview with their pre- 
siding deities, — and, in short, most of the un- 
wanted phenomena, employed as demonstra- 
tions of the will of their deities, are suscepti- 
ble of being represented in a modern chemical 
or philosophical laboratory, or may readily be 
explained by an observation of ordinary nat- 
ural causes. 

When it is considered that the most de- 
grading ignorance of the sciences pervaded 
the mass of the people of ancient nations, and 
that an undying propensity for the marvelous 
and mysterious, ever characterizes this condi- 
tion; when we reflect that the temples in 
which their religious rites were enacted, proba- 
bly possessed a structure and scenery well 
suited to represent the imposing mysteries of 
which they were the theatres ; that these 
were conducted by a hereditary priesthood, 
skilled in the manipulations of their art, who 
wielded agencies concealed within the awful 
veil which shrouded their operations; and 



CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 37 

when it is taken into consideration, with what 
excited imaginations and passions the pious 
worshiper there approached the capricious 
divinity, it is not surprising that the minds of the 
multitudes of ancient nations, should have 
been moulded and governed by the machine- 
ry of a factitious theology ; or that they were 
the credulous and superstitious people that 
history represents to us. 

If, as is most probable, a theology thus art- 
fully devised, was made effective in subduing 
the multitude, it is likewise reasonable to 
presume, that even the philosophers and sages, 
with no light, but that of natural reason, to 
direct them through the complex labyrinths 
of nature, (so evincive of a designing archi- 
tect,) in their dubious and unsatisfactory con- 
dition, must have viewed their relations to 
such manifest invisible power, with a super- 
stitious awe and apprehension, bordering upon 
that with which they inspired their less gifted 
fellow countrymen, when contemplating the 
factitious divinities devised for their subju- 
gation. 

Such are the conclusions to which we are 
impelled, relative to the instrumentality, and 
consequent blighting influence, which poly- 
theism exerted to effect the degradation of 
the human mind, and which plunged it into 

4* 



38 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

that multiplicity of vice and depravity, so 
abounding in nations subject to its control. 

We have now to contemplate a condition 
of society, in which Christianity has, in a de- 
gree, dissipated the absurd fables of polythe- 
ism, and taught man his true relations to 
his Maker; — in which a more generally dif- 
fused education has enabled him to assert the 
native dignity and equality of human char- 
acter, and assisted in wresting from his mind 
the manacles of a theology devised with the 
view of subjugating his intellect and his will. 

Yet notwithstanding the interposition of 
such a fortunate revolution, in behalf of the 
supremacy of reason, we shall still find the 
mind often yielding to the influence of the 
imagination and the passions, and fostering 
credulity and superstition, little less gross than 
that which swayed the devotees of pagan 
theology. 

In the state of transition from polytheism to 
Christianity, it could hardly be presumed that 
the recent converts to the latter, could easily 
depose their faith in the ghostly influence de- 
rived from an education in the tenets of the 
former; and which, consequently, had become 
intimately blended and associated with their 
habits of thought and mental conception. 

Accordingly it will be found, that during 
the strife which occurred between the genius 






CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 3 9 

of polytheism, and Christianity, their respec- 
tive fanatical advocates often vied with each 
other, in asserting their adverse claims to pre- 
cedence, by their appeal to progidies and 
miracles, to the no small detriment of the lat- 
ter. More especially, since Christianity, in- 
stead of attempting to subdue the obdurate 
passions by an appeal to a sense of the novel 
and the marvelous, proffers rather the superior 
claim of its ability to enlighten the reason and 
understanding; and, while it exhibits to man 
his duties to society, it at the same time de- 
monstrates his religious obligations, and the 
character of his Creator. 

On the final overthrow of paganism by 
Christianity, it would have been fortunate for 
the latter, had the magic and prodigies, with 
the various deceptions devised for sustaining 
the former, perished in its ruins. So far, how- 
ever, was this from being the fact, that we 
shall find pretenders to Christianity, in some 
of the rival sects, exerting the engines of fraud 
and imposition, with an energy worthy of 
their pagan competitors ; and this, it must be 
presumed, was enacted more for the purpose 
of promoting personal reputation, and the at- 
tainment of objects of temporal ambition, than 
with the view of advancing the spiritual inter- 
ests of their confiding adherents. 



40 CHEDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

If pagan impostors extorted a votive fee, 
and at the same time disciplined the worship- 
pers of the factitious god for the yoke of their 
tyrants, by magic, by prodigies, and other ap- 
parent supernatural machinery, the spurious 
saints or prophets of Christianity effected ob- 
jects no less culpable, by astonishing their 
ignorant adherents, by apparent miracles, 
wrought, no doubt, mostly by scientific ex- 
periments and mysticisms, through which the 
imagination was beguiled, and the real object 
of faith was rendered obscure. 

Through the knowledge of natural coinci- 
dences, furnished by science, or by secret 
agents, a prophetic character was not unfre- 
quenly conferred upon such pretenders, and 
in many cases, the various wonders of the 
natural world were, no doubt, sought and 
made available to astonish the ignorant; and 
were adduced as evidence, that their demon- 
strator was a special recognized agent and fa- 
vorite of heaven. There is little doubt, but 
that many of the less familiar phenomena of 
nature have furnished the means by which 
apparent miracles have been wrought by the 
designing, before those ignorant of their 
causes and character. Thus the mirage, a 
phenomena peculiar to particular locations, is 
produced by refraction of the sun's rays, by 
atmospheric vapor of unequal density, by 



CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 41 

which objects, as ships, villages, persons, &c. 
ordinarily invisible, are brought into view, ap- 
parently suspended in the air, either inverted, 
or erect, and of exaggerated size. These being 
simply natural optical illusions, might easily 
be exhibited by the designing impostor as 
serial spectres. Other instances of the singu- 
lar effects of refraction, or reflection, might 
be referred to ; as the celebrated spectre of 
Brocken, of the Hartz mountain, in Hanover: 
the Fata Morgiana, of the straits of Massena, 
where men, animals, and even landscapes, as 
by a mirror, are represented as in nature, ele- 
vated in the atmosphere.* Such, by the pre- 
tended and designing heavenly favorite, might 
easily be made to appear to credulity, as spirits 

*These are doubtless natural phenomena, produced by 
reflection or refraction, when the rays of light, proceeding 
from the object to the eye, pass through a medium of un- 
equal density. It may happen, thnt an inequality of tem- 
perature is formed between the land, or water, and the 
atmosphere in the vicinity of the objects thus represented. 
In such condition, a passage of heat, or caloric, is con- 
stantly occurring from the hotter to the colder medium. 
It will be perceived, therefore, that when the earth, or 
water, is more heated than the superincumbent air, the 
adjacent stratum of the latter will become heated from 
the former, and consequently more ra rifled than the strata 
above, causing the inequality required for the refraction 
necessary to effect the above phenomena. The rays of 
light, in passing from the object to the eye, thence become 
refracted, or curved from their ordinary straight lines, 



42 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

obedient to his invocation. These, with 
numerous other natural phenomena of varied 
character, will not fail to be suggested to those 
but moderately versed in natural philosophy, 
as adequate to explain a large portion of the 

causing the objects to appear elevated above their true 
position. 

Objects thus represented, will appear erect, if within 
the focal distance of the natural lenses formed by this 
inequality of density of the different strata of air; or they 
will appear inverted, when the eye is sufficiently beyond 
such focal distances to permit the rays to enter it af- 
ter their focal crossings. If to such inequality of den- 
sity, is added an extremely attenuated aqueous vapor, a 
reflection of a portion of the rays will occur, and a spec- 
tral image of the beholder will be formed, as by a common 
mirror, which will appear of a size holding a relation to 
the convexity or concavity of the natural mirror thus 
formed. The mirage is an instance of refraction, and the 
spectre of Brocken of reflection. Similar phenomena 
are stated by Humbolt to be of frequent occurrence in 
South America, and they have been often noted by others. 

Recently a description of an optical illusion was given 
by a traveler across a desert, situated between New 
Mexico and California. The writer, a member of a com- 
pany en route for California, relates, that they were one 
day startled by the appearance of a company, consisting 
of men and animals, apparently at a distance, which at 
first caused no inconsiderable alarm, from the supposition 
of its being a band of hostile savages. It subsequently 
proved to be but a mirror representation of their own 
band, produced doubtless by the atmospheric phenomena 
alluded to. 

(For a more particular description of the above phe- 
nomena, see Brewster's Natural Magic.) 






CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 43 

so called miracles, announced by monks and 
pretended saints, for the admiration of the 
credulous and superstitious. 

It has been noticed as most probable, that 
the pagan devotees, by means of mirrors and 
lenses, so arranged in the ancient temples as 
to effect the requisite optical illusions, aided 
by ventriloquism, were made to hold an im- 
aginary personal interview with their presi- 
ding deities. It is equally probable, that a 
large portion of the miracles imposed upon 
credulous Christians in the dark periods of the 
church, was effected by frauds of a similar 
description. 

It is known to those familiar with optics, 
that by the aid of a concave mirror, with suit- 
ably arranged lenses, and a magic lantern, 
objects ordinarily invisible to an audience, 
may be apparently introduced before it, either 
exaggerated or distorted, to any degree of 
frightfulness. The dead may be apparently 
evoked from their graves, and by the aid of 
ventriloquism, made to hold conversation with 
their living friends. Apparent demons, or 
angels, may be presented in attitudes and cos- 
tume, suited to accomplish the objects of their 
introduction; and various other exhibitions 
of like character may be represented, which 
might be palmed upon the ignorant and cred- 
ulous, as supernatural manifestations. Artifi- 



44 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

ces of this description would doubtless be made 
available, by unprincipled pretenders to inspi- 
ration, who had become inspired by the ambi- 
tion of acquiring the character of heavenly 
vicegerents. 

By one possessing an acquaintance with 
the various drugs and medicines, somnolency, 
ecstacy, and delirium may be easily effected. 
With the power occasionally acquired over 
animals of the most ferocious character, and 
over reptiles, by which their natures appear 
changed to mildness, as exhibited by the an- 
cient Psilli, or serpent tamers, the modern 
Van Amburgh, and others, a supposed miracu- 
lous control of the instinctive attributes w 7 as 
represented. With a knowledge and exer- 
cise of the physiological sympathies, by which 
various diseases, and even death, are often 
simulated in persons of excitable and suscep- 
tible nervous temperament; — and with the 
ability of controling the wonderful illusions 
capable of being effected by optics, by chem- 
istry, and galvanism, by means of which the 
most surprising metamorphoses are induced, 
and even death apparently is made to give 
place to vitality, a power apparently superhu- 
man was wielded. When it is considered, 
that such exhibitions w T ere made before credu- 
lous spectators, whose senses and reason were 
enchained by an excited imagination, and an 



CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 45 

irresistible propensity to believe in the mar- 
velous, aided by the influence capable of be- 
ing derived from art and science, together with 
that afforded by manual dexterity, it is not 
difficult to conceive, that the magic and pro- 
digies of the ancients, and the miracles exhi- 
bited subsequent to the first century of Chris- 
tianity, by its pretended friends, might have 
been represented, exclusive of the aid of su- 
pernatural intervention. 

When it is further taken into consideration, 
that many of the affected miraculous events 
which have astonished the credulous, are but 
legends, or narratives, related by monks and 
recluses, we need hardly hesitate to conclude, 
that the entire machinery of so called modern 
miracles, are but knavish devices to sustain, by 
such appeal to credulity, religious tenets want- 
ing the support of the genuine precepts of the 
Divine Author of Christianity. 



SECTION II. 

Witchcraft. 

The absurd and maniacal belief in witch- 
craft, so fraught with evils to society in the 
last and the preceding century, and from which 
no nation can boast total exemption, appears 
in the present age nearly extinguished. This 
is unquestionably one of the baleful progeny 
which is indebted for its origin to magic and 
the occult sciences ; and all the phenomena 
which gave rise to the belief in its reality, 
admit of the same or similar explanation as 
heretofore given of that fruitful source of men- 
tal delusion. 

This branch of the occult sciences was per- 
haps invented and cultivated, to give variety 
to the delusions which the professional im- 
postor exhibited as novelties, in barter for the 
more substantial offerings of ignorance and 
credulity. If, however, w r e are to estimate its 
character from the puerilities and follies 
which history, in general, details of its ope- 
rations, we can but infer, that it was a degen- 
erate offspring of its parent, in which the 
" magician had lost his cunning ;" or that he 
had adapted his art in accordance with the 



48 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

infantile taste of the ages in which it flour- 
ished. It will be perceived, that instead 
of the adroit deceptions practiced upon the 
senses by ancient magic, the chief aspirations 
of its modern progeny, it would appear, were 
generally limited to such petty recreations as 
perambulating the air on broomsticks; its tra- 
ditional nocturnal bachanals at the Sabbat,* 

* The Sabbat was a supposed assembly of witches, 
met in mystic conclave, which was presided over by the 
devil. An introduction to its orgies was supposed to be 
effected by rubbing the palms of the hands, soles of the 
feet, and sometimes the entire body, with an enchanted 
pomade. The effect of this was, the supply of wings, 
with which the initiated flew to the Sabbat. The em- 
ployment there, was dancing with broomsticks, and the 
practice of many ridiculous bachanals until the morning, 
when the assembly was dissolved. 

It has been supposed that ointments were formed from 
such poisonous plants as henbane, stramoninm, cicuta, 
&c, which professional impostors often applied to their 
ignorant dupes, with the effect of producing such deli- 
rious dreams as had been previously impressed upon 
their imagination, which became waking hallucinations 
of a real belief, by the deluded wretches, of their presence 
at these assemblies. It is more probable, however, that 
the traditionary tales of these meetings, which were 
doubtless rife during the excitements of an epidemic 
witchcraft, impressed the imaginations of weak minds 
to the degree represented as produced by the en- 
chanted pomade. It is therefore not unlikely, that ma- 
ny ignorant, but innocent victims, thus monomaniacally 
affected, may have been induced to a confession of par- 
ticipation in sorcery, and by such act have sacrificed 
their lives as the penalty of their imprudence. 



WITCHCRAFT. 49 

or elsewkere ; or its even more ridiculous in- 
terference with kitchen housewifery, by its 
antics with the butter churn, or with the pigs 
or poultry ; and its equally perplexing annoy- 
ances practised upon the goat-herd or hus- ■ 
bandman. 

Again, while original magic arts exhibited 
a skill and power calculated to excite admi- 
ration of the resources of the human intel- 
lect, witchcraft, on the contrary, produced 
the effect rather to demean its power, by its 
habitual resorts to the most petty and con- 
temptible expedients to accomplish the ob- 
jects of its low ambition. While the former 
has been the professional employment of the 
wise and the learned, the latter is more often 
that of the old, the ugly, the vicious and des- 
pised, whose odious forms and character, pub- 
lic disgust — biased by general ignorance, and 
favoring epidemic influences, — has, without 
doubt, been prone to exaggerate into a rela- 
tionship and association with demoniacal 
agencies.* 

* An old writer of note, who lived in the time when 
witchcraft extensively prevailed, thus describes the 
characters of reputed witches. They were " women 
which be commonly old, lame, bleare-eied, pale, fowll, 
and full of wrinkles, poore, sullen, superstitious and pa- 
pists ; or such as know no religion ; in whose drousie 
minds the the devell hath gotten a fine sear ; so as, what 

5* 



50 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

In Christian communities, a belief in witch- 
craft, as a supernatural art, has doubtless ob- 
tained no small support from the notice which 
it receives from Scripture, in the case of king 
Saul, and the denunciation of the art therein 
contained. But it is believed, that such no- 
tice rather has reference to the sin of this 
specific imposition, than to an art recognized 
as a direct compact with the infernal powers. 
There is great reason for believing, that J;he 
dramatic exhibition enacted by the Witch of 
Endor, by which Saul was made to believe in 
the re-appearance of the deceased prophet 
Samuel to announce his approaching fate at 
Gilboa, was but an imposition practiced upon 
the senses of that monarch. In whatever 
character it may be estimated, it certainly 
evinced far less of dramatic skill in its execu- 
tion, than the scenes mentioned as exhibited 



mischafe, mischance, calamitie or slaughter, is brought to 
passe, they are easilie perswaded the same is doone 
by themselves, imprinting in their minds an earnest and 
constant imagination thereof. They are lean and de- 
formed, shewing melancholie in their faces, to the hor- 
rer of all that see them. They are doting scholds, mad, 
develish, and not much differing from them that are 
thought to be possessed with spirits ; so firm and stead- 
fast in their opinions, as whosoever shall onlie have re- 
spect to the constancie of their words uttered, would 
easilie believe they were true indeed." — Reginald Scott's 
(< Discoverie of Witchcraft." 



WITCHCRAFT. 51 

to the devotee of the Grecian temples, as 
in these the solicited personage was often 
introduced to the astonished senses of the 
petitioners; while in the case of the Jewish 
king, it is not stated that either he or his 
companions actually beheld the vision an- 
nounced, but rather that his knowledge of the 
presence of the ghost was based on the au- 
thority of the actress alone. 

It is most probable, therefore, that this trans- 
action was but a scenic representation devised 
for the occasion, and pre-announced by emis- 
saries of the sorceress, in time for a preparation 
of the scenery. In the exhibition presented to 
Saul, unlike those of the temples, where a spec- 
tral apparition was introduced, the probable 
ventriloquism constituted the main demonstra- 
ble evidence of the supernatural presence. 
The terror manifested by the actress was 
most likely but a well represented affectation 
of the passion, which the habits of her avo- 
cation enabled her to render imposing. The 
prediction which followed was such, that in 
the known straitened condition of the Jewish 
army on the eve of the battle of Gilboa, it 
required no witch or prophet to pre-announce 
a result which was most probably foreshad- 
owed to the entire nation. Indeed, when it 
is considered, that to the naturally hypochon- 
drical mind of the monarch, was added a 



52 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

consciousness of imminent peril, similar to 
that impending over Brutus and Julian, on the 
night preceding their disasters, it is in no de- 
gree surprising that the Jewish king should 
disregard whatever defects might, to a more 
indifferent spectator, be apparent in the 
scene ; nor that he should have been the dupe 
of a deception practiced before him. 

It has been noticed, that in scenic arrange- 
ment, this exhibition of Jewish sorcery was 
manifestly inferior to those of its cotemporary 
relative, the magic of the Egyptian or Grecian 
temples, in which was presented, by means of 
mirrors, lenses, &c. a spectral apparition of the 
object sought. Yet it must be admitted, that 
this far surpassed, in adroitness and dignity, 
most of the exhibitions of modern witchcraft 
which its history has famished. Most of the 
manifestations of modern sorcery, by which 
communities have not unfrequently been agi- 
tated, and the worst of public calamities in- 
duced, have been noticed as of a most puerile 
character, unworthy the name of an art, and 
alike demeaning to the taste and capacities 
of its professors, and of the intelligent evil 
agent by whom they were supposed to be 
suggested. If exceptions to such puerile char- 
acter of witchcraft are occasionally found, 
they are to be explained from the intellectual 
superiority of those who directed their opera- 
tions. 



WITCHCRAFT. 53 

A careful analysis of its phenomena will 
prove it in the main, to consist in a display of 
the petty malice of insignificant and unprinci- 
pled individuals, toward rivals or enemies; or to 
have originated from an ambition, through ec- 
centricity of character, of acquiring notoriety 
in a neighborhood, for the purposes of interest 
or fame ; or, what is far more frequent, they 
are derived from such natural phenomena, or 
artful devices, which, from ignorance of their 
real causes, have been imputed to demoniac 
influence, wielded by some weak or con- 
temned individuals, upon whom public odium 
or dread had concentrated. 

That witchcraft of this character should, 
in modern society, have become epidemical 
throughout whole kingdoms, as history fur- 
nishes abundant proofs, is certainly one of 
the most inexplicable enigmas presented in 
the operations of the human mind. It admits 
of explanation, only from that wonderful en- 
dowment of the animal economy, termed 
sympathy, which has been found, in a variety 
of circumstances, to possess an involuntary 
control of its action, as well in health as in 
disease. 

• What is most surprising in this case, is 
the fact, that the moral pestilence, when of an 
epidemic character, has proved its efficiency, 
not only in the perversion of the intellects of 



54 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

the ignorant, but also of many of the learned 
and wise, who lived in times when the sym- 
pathetic contagion became diffused throughout 
society. It is unquestionably, in no small 
degree, attributable to the fact that sorcery, as 
a supernatural art, has been sustained by a 
Bacon, a Mather, and others of distinguished 
reputation, that the discussion regarding its 
reality has been prolonged. But since most 
national delusions, such as that of astrology, the 
philosopher's stone, with such maniacal spec- 
ulations as those of the feouth Sea, Mississippi, 
and numerous others of like character, have 
involved minds of similar intellectual calibre 
in their results, these instances may rather be 
received as evidence, that human reason, even 
in its greatest development, is not devoid of 
imbecility, — especially when assailed by the 
contagious influence of sympathetic national 
hallucinations. 

Probably no delusion or imposition which 
has ever acquired an ascendancy over the 
human mind, has proved so detrimental to the 
interests and true happiness of society, as has 
the popular belief in sorcery, or witchcraft. 
If magic has been instrumental in subjugating 
the mmd in bondage to a factitious theology, 
thereby enchaining its native powers to an ab- 
ject despotism, — or has occasionally resorted 
to assassination, clandestine murder by potent 



WITCHCRAFT. 55 

poisons, and to formidable experiments, as the 
reserved agents tor the protection of its se- 
crets, (in many instances no doubt designed 
to verify its predictions, and thus to perpetuate 
its influence,) — it has the merit of originating 
and cultivating many of the important sciences, 
such as natural philosophy, chemistry, medi- 
cine, &c. with the view to aid its operations. 

Astrology and alchemy, though they ex- 
cited false hopes in mankind concerning na- 
tivity, health and longevity, and preyed upon 
the interests of their deluded devotees, can 
assert claims of having improved astronomy, 
mathematics, meteorology, botany, and in some 
degree the other sciences, by the necessary stu- 
dies of their proficients. But the more mod- 
ern art of sorcery, while it can assert no claim 
to results which have produced, directly or in- 
directly, such benefit to society, has ever, in 
times of its prevalence, detrimentally affected 
the social compact, by introducing general dis- 
trust among its constituents, dissevered the 
natural ties of kindred and friends, poisoned 
ihe fountains of happiness by unchaining the 
dissocial passions, and engendered the most 
gloomy forebodings of evil, and the darkest 
superstition. Indeed, it may be asserted, that 
by judicial and other murders of its innocent 
but mostly ignorant victims, it has in its de- 
structive career been a formidable rival to war, 
pestilence, and famine. 



56 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

It is difficult for the existing generation to 
compute the immense sum of evil which their 
predecessors have experienced from the ab- 
surd belief in sorcery. Sufficient, however, 
may be comprehended to demonstrate the im- 
becility of human reason, when neglecting the 
efforts necessary to enable it to acquire a due 
estimate of its powers. It is, without doubt, 
to the light derived from a generally diffused 
science, that the bane, at this era of the world, 
has nearly lost its virus within the borders of 
civilization ; and as history is but philosophy 
teaching by example, a discussion of its evils, 
so abounding in the past, is mostly useful as 
affording a beacon by which to avoid those so 
fatal to the happiness of past generations ; 
while at the same time an illustration is fur- 
nished, that errors most portentous for the 
stability of society, are susceptible of exter- 
mination by a suitable mental culture. 



SECTION III. 

Dreams. % 

Of a similar character, and resulting from 
the same propensity of the mind for the mar- 
velous, which has been alluded to in the pre- 
ceding sections, is the belief which has as- 
signed to dreams a rank with the supernatural. 
All mental impressions deviating from the or- 
dinary operations of the mind ; all the repre- 
sentations of sense to it, of a character to 
which it has not been accustomed, have ever 
been claimed by the credulous as derived from 
agencies exterior and foreign to those ordinari- 
ly originating mental conceptions; or, in short, 
have been by them ascribed to a supernatural 
influence controling its action. 

Although to the philosophical observer"' it 
may be superfluous to state, that such belief 
originates from an inattention to a due analy- 
sis of the impressions derived from the senses, 
or from a too hasty reception of traditionary 
legends derived from rude and ignorant ages, 
yet it may be useful briefly to notice the 
physiological condition upon which such rep- 
resentations and erroneous notions are de- 
pendent. 

6 



58 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

All dreams originate from former sensa- 
tions, which have been introduced by the 
senses, and stored in the mind, susceptible of 
being recalled by memory and submitted to the 
scrutiny of the reasoning faculty, by which their 
relations are determined, through the agency 
of association. Such being the action of the 
internal faculties relative to the materials fur- 
nished by the several senses, it occurs in a 
state of imperfect sleep, i. e. when a part of 
the mental faculties are torporized, and oth- 
ers, with memory, are in a state of activity, 
that the sensations in store are recalled by 
memory, and associations instituted similar to 
those of a state of wakefulness. But the pro- 
cess w r anting the correction of judgment and 
the active senses, imagination often effects 
combinations so fantastic as to represent ob- 
jects, or scenes, wholly deviating from those 
occurring in nature. Thus it may occur in 
sleep, that the active faculties, by combining 
parts of the sensation derived from an eagle, 
with that of the horse, that a being like the 
fabulous griffin should be presented to the 
mind as a reality ; or wings may be supplied 
in the same manner to a reptile, representing 
a flying dragon, which will be presented to 
the mind as a real existence, until the aroused 
senses shall furnish a correction. Such it will 
be perceived are but ordinary sensations, com- 



DREAMS. 59 

bined by the imagination in a manner which 
possess no types in nature. But it may hap- 
pen in the various modes of combination in 
sleep, that objects, or events, are portrayed in 
accordance with nature, but in forms exagge- 
rated, diminished, or distorted, in comparison 
with their types with which we have been fa- 
miliar, and therefore have become the typical 
standard of judgment on all after sensations. 
In such case, the credulous not unfrequently 
become excited to a state of apprehension, or 
fear, from the conviction that such are of extra 
natural character, and of course a foreshad- 
owing of evil or good awaiting them in the 
future. 

The relations of the mind with its adjunct 
material organization, are manifestly most in- 
timate and dependent. But what may be the 
essential nature of their union, or the mode 
by which the affections of each are mutually 
interchanged, or communicated, will probably 
elude the efforts of research during their ma- 
terial connection. Such manifestly, however, 
is the character of their association, that the 
affections or impressions originating in the 
one are by mutual sympathy communicated 
to its associate ; and a series of actions, either 
mental or corporeal, are consequent and in ac- 
cordance therewith. However intricate may 
be the connection between mind and matter, 



60 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

it is manifest that it is to the mutual sympa- 
thies originating therefrom, together with the 
relations existing between the several mental 
faculties, that we are to derive an explanation 
of the phenomena exhibited by the mind in 
dreams. In conformity with these relations, 
and in accordance with the impressions af- 
fecting either the organs or the mind, through 
the agency of its sensations in store, will be 
formed the great variety of dreams which are 
brought to our consideration. Thus those of 
the conscience stricken culprit, who has suc- 
ceeded in eluding justice, will be influenced 
by his predominant idea, and prisons and gib- 
bets will be depicted in his dreams. Or when 
barred within the cell of the condemned, his 
ardent desires of life may occasionally prepon- 
derate in his dreams, and depict to him ideal 
scenes of freedom, and escape from his mer- 
ited deserts. The miser will dream of wealth, 
or the poverty which harasses his imagination 
during his wakeful hours ; and the enthusiast, 
of heavenly bliss or of devils, and the torments 
w r hich await the spiritual transgressor. In 
all these cases, organic actions will generally 
result, which are in accordance with the ex- 
citing mental process. 

Such is the stimulus which gives coloring 
to the dreamy phantoms, when the influence 
of the correcting senses and the judgment is 



DREAMS. 61 

withdrawn by the torpor of sleep, and the 
trains of thought instituted by the wakeful fa- 
culties are directed by the inventive imagina- 
tion only. 

On the contrary, all bodily derangements 
which interrupt healthy sleep, by becoming 
sympathetic stimuli to the mind, often depict 
in exaggeration, conditions of affliction, sick- 
ness, suffering and death ; which train of 
mental disasters, probably, in most cases are 
suggested by a slight irritation of the diges- 
tive organs, arising from imperfectly digested 
food, or other structural irritations of an un- 
pleasant character, which a waking attention 
to external objects would render ineffective on 
the mind. 

Of a similar character, though produced by 
more permanent and efficient causes, is the 
delerium from grave disease, in which the 
embarrassed organs supply such unnatural 
stimulus to the brain, that the equilibrium of 
the faculties becomes disturbed to such a de- 
gree, that the ideas in store in the mind predom- 
inate over those immediately affecting the ex- 
ternal senses ; and are combined in a manner 
productive of the exaltation, incoherence, and 
mental imagery, characterizing that affection. 
It may be remarked, that in a condition of 
healthy correspondence of the bodily and men- 
tal functions, either the entire faculties of the 



62 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

mind subside into a state of inactivity and en- 
tire quiesence ; or when in a state of partial 
activity, they are employed in such combina- 
tion of retained sensations, as will effect 
dreams of a character corresponding in agree- 
ableness with that experienced from the orig- 
inal external sensations constituting their 
types; and such as a normal state of the 
systematic functions ever effects, whether 
in the sleeping or waking condition. It 
would indeed be extraordinary, considering 
the uniformity of occurring events with those 
past, should none occur in the future bearing 
a similitude to those which have been previ- 
ously presented to the mind in a state of 
sleep. It is doubtless this natural similitude, 
or perhaps the exciting and strange combina- 
tion of ideas constituting the dream, from the 
causes alluded to, which has originated the 
notion, that the mental vagaries during sleep, 
are occasional revelations, or foresh ado wings 
of future events. But notwithstanding this 
ready faith of the credulous in the supposed 
revelation, it is conceived that they rarely de- 
rive indications from the premonition, suffi- 
ciently explicit to direct their action in suita- 
ble adaptation to meet the event presumed to 
be predicted. Indeed it is difficult for reason 
to detect an economy in such dubious fore- 
shadowings, even in the view of their being of 



DREAMS. 63 

supernatural origin. And it is certain that lit- 
tle results therefrom, except the vague hopes 
or fears which they excite, and the conse- 
quent effects of these upon the dreamer, or 
the object of his dream. 

It is probable that the events realized sub- 
sequent to their prototypes having been shad- 
owed in dreams, are generally such as have 
been ardently expected, or painfully dreaded; 
such as had been the subject of a thoughtful 
impression anterior to the dream ; and that in 
most instances, such dream is but a repetition 
of sensations which have previously been in- 
troduced to the mind in its ardent contempla- 
tion of such expected future contingency. 

There is little doubt that the credulous 
faith, conferring upon extraordinary dreams a 
premonitory character, has in many instances 
prompted the dreamer to the efforts which 
were requisite for the attainment of the good 
foreshadowed ; or that the dread of a disas- 
trous event, as where death at a particular pe- 
riod was predicted in a dream, with attendant 
circumstances of an impressive character, has 
produced such depressing effect upon an ex- 
citable nervous system, on the approach of 
the dreaded period, as to extinguish the vital 
principle. The hope or fear of an event, in 
such case, becomes the agent of its accom- 
plishment. That occasional correspondences 



64 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

should occur between dreams and succeeding 
events, is in no degree surprising. But that 
the natural activity of the mind during sleep 
should possess a necessary connection with 
either the good or evil events succeeding, 
obtains no support from reason or a philosoph- 
ical view of facts. 



SECTION IV. 

Ghosts. 

The conceived existence of ghosts, as su- 
pernatural personal representations, has been 
the subject of discussion by philosophers, and 
has inspired the timid and credulous with 
dread and apprehension in aJl ages. 

It is not surprising that such notions should 
exist in periods in which the vital laws had 
received but little cultivation ; nor that they 
should have obtained credence with the de- 
votees of religious beliefs, like those of the an- 
cients, which represented the elements as peo- 
pled by innumerable invisible agents, who 
were active intermeddlers in human affairs ; 
nor even that they should have found a 
place in the systems of ancient philosophy, 
which inculcated the most vague and indefi- 
nite notions in relation to the soul and its 
destiny. But it might rationally be antici- 
pated, that the modern refinements of natural 
and revealed science, by which the laws of 
nature and the attributes of Deity have been 
demonstrated, would long since have dissi- 
pated a belief, which neither receives support 
from the one, nor conveys an elevated con- 



66 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

ception of the economy of the other. For, in 
most instances, such supposed spiritual inter- 
course has occurred with the weak and the 
ignorant, and so illegible has been the revela- 
tion, that little has resulted to the recipient, 
beyond the terror and vague apprehensions 
which were aroused. It is therefore difficult 
for the mind to detect a w 7 ise economy in such 
reputed premonitory acts, through which it is 
rarely pretended that indications are given, by 
which the w 7 ill or object of the agent is re- 
vealed. 

It may be confidently asserted, that most of 
the instances adduced as proofs of the exist- 
ence of ghosts as actual personalities, admit of 
explanation, either as being deceptions prac- 
ticed upon the timid by the designing, through 
the aid of suitable costume, or optical instru- 
ments, such as has been referred to as effect- 
ing pretended miracles ; — by ordinary objects, 
presented to the credulous through an obscure 
medium, thereby receiving exaggeration and 
distortion by the imagination, to such a de- 
gree as to forbid the excited beholder institu- 
ting an examination requisite to ascertain their 
real character ; — or they are to be referred for 
an explanation to an occasional disordered 
condition of the optic nerve, by means of 
which fictitious images are introduced to the 
mind as real external existences. 



GHOSTS. . 67 

It is well known to physiologists, that the 
optic nerve, in case of slight disease, is subject 
to illusions possessing every shade of charac- 
ter which is ascribed to ghosts ; and that the 
auditory nerve likewise, when similarly af- 
fected, causes internal sounds, which have 
been depicted by the fancy as those fearful 
premonitions, termed warnings, which have at 
all times given alarm to those unacquainted 
with the phenomenon. In such state, like 
that of mental affection in dreams, the impres- 
sions made by external objects on the senses 
are weakened, or insufficient to excite the at- 
tention of the mind; while previous sensations 
in store become excited to more active combi- 
nations, in consequence of the disarranged 
state of the mental functions. In such condi- 
tions, pictures are exhibited to the mind from 
past sensations, in forms so impressive that 
they predominate over those representing ex- 
ternal objects present on the retina. In such 
case, for instance, the impression made by the 
past sensation of dead or absent friends, or 
other objects of interest, will exclude the im- 
ages made by external objects, present on the 
tablet of the retina, and the dead or absent 
are introduced, as really present to the mental 
view ; and that in a form such as previous 
sensations or existing apprehensions may de- 
pict them. Thus the spectre presented to 



68 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

Brutus, and that to the emperor Julian, on the 
eve of their approaching fate, were of such 
character as would most likely be represented 
to minds like theirs, disordered by anxiety, 
and excited by a lively sense of their critical 
condition, and the expected disastrous results 
which their superior sagacity, doubtless, fore- 
shadowed as impending. The habiliments of 
the grave, as naturally the last and most dura- 
ble impression made by the view of deceased 
friends, or the death scene which often haunts 
the conscience stricken assassin, would most 
likely be represented in such disordered mental 
condition. Absent friends would appear as 
last witnessed, unless apprehension of their 
death had aroused a stronger impression in 
the mind, in which case the funereal drama 
would be that most likely to be represented in 
the phantom scene. 

Few of the relations respecting the appear- 
ance of ghosts, which history furnishes, are 
sufficiently attested to merit attention. Some 
of the best authenticated, like those appearing 
to Brutus, and the emperor Julian, are sus- 
ceptible of explanation in the manner alluded 
to. Others, like those appearing to Nicolai, 
the patient of Doct. Abercrombie, and that of 

Mrs. A , adduced by Sir David Brewster, 

were contemplated by their spectators as re- 
sulting from disordered action of the brain and 



GHOSTS. 69 

retina.* Others, if not as susceptible of solu- 
tion as these, most probably originated from 
similar disordered conditions, which escaped 
the attention of their subjects. But far the 
most numerous are, unquestionably, but fic- 
tions of the imagination, exhibited in circum- 
stances amid which the mind, from the ex- 
citement of fear, was incapable of investigating 
their true character. Was further evidence 
required to confirm the belief of the illusory 
nature of the spectral visions, reference might 
be made to the fact, that the greatest portion 
of these narratives are furnished from times of 
ignorance and gross credulity; and that in 
the ratio of the advancement of a rational 
science, has been a proportionate diminution 
of ghostly exhibitions. As regards the occa- 
sional coincidence between the phantom and 
subsequent death, it may be confidently re- 
marked, that evidence is wanting which proves 
the fact that such relation exists in greater fre- 
quency than from other symptoms of disease ; 
such as double vision, vertigo, deranged intel- 
lect, or severe pains of the head, which indi- 
cate grave affection of the brain. The phan- 
tom, together with the last named symptoms, 



* For a particular description of the above cases, to- 
gether with the pathological state on which they were 
dependent, see Brewster's Natural Magic, Letter III. 

7 



70 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

affording evidence of invading disease, while 
death is effected by its destructive progress. 
It will hence be perceived, that notwithstand- 
ing the supposed supernatural message with 
which the ghost-seer has been favored, he is 
furnished with no surer means of predicting a 
fat 1 result following, than has the physician 
who prognosticates from the other indications 
mentioned, both of which may be viewed 
with a degree of apprehension. 

Diseases have a tendency to a fatal termi- 
nation in a degree holding relation to the vital 
importance of the organs implicated. Those 
seriously affecting the brain, in consequence 
of its great influence over the vital functions, 
are ever to be regarded with apprehension, 
in whatever manner they are announced. 
But as ghosts are but a form of spectral illu- 
sion, indicating a state of disease in this or- 
gan, if they have proved more ominous of fa- 
tality than their congenial symptoms, it is 
doubtless to be explained by a reference to the 
aid which an imagination, excited by the vis- 
ion, renders to the depressing tendency of dis- 
ease on the vital functions. 

So numerous are the instances in which 
spectral illusions have occurred to philosophi- 
cal men personally, and have been presented 
to them as subjects for their observation ; and 
so thoroughly have they received investigation 



GHOSTS. 71 

from them, with calm reflection, and a judg- 
ment unbiased by the fears which influence 
the timid on such occasions, that the above 
conclusions relative to the nature of ghosts, 
or spectres, may be received as in no degree 
problematical.* 

Manifestations equally marvelous with those 
of vision, have occasionally been produced by 
the other senses ; but in forms appropriate to 
the function of each. Imaginary sounds, as 
addresses from absent friends or strangers, un- 
natural voices, such as have been received by 
the credulous as ominous warnings, musical 
notes, &c. have been illusions originating from 
a disordered state of the auditory nerve, giv- 
ing origin to a vast variety of speculation, and 
many unhappy superstitions. 

The sense of feeling has supplied instan- 
ces of either apathy or an extreme morbid 
sensitiveness which were so extraordinary, 
as to appear to those of ordinary sensibil- 

* The stories and legends of phantom ships, as the 
flying Dutchman, and numerous other aerial spectres, 
which are stereotyped nursery tales, if of sufficient au- 
thenticity to deserve notice, admit of explanation from 
the presumption that they were representations of real 
objects concealed from view by an intervening medium, 
as hills, the earth's convexity, &c. which were made visi- 
ble by the phenomenon of refraction in a manner al- 
luded to in a previous note, page 41. 



72 CREDULITY" AND SUPERSTITION. 

i(y as partaking of the marvelous. Sub- 
jects of these affections have ever been ad- 
judged by the credulous, as deriving their pow- 
ers, either from the demoniacal or heavenly 
agencies. Persons in the apathetic state, 
have tolerated with apparent indifference the 
effects of fire, of cold, and mechanical irri- 
tants, to a degree that those possessing a 
healthy sense would be unable to endure. 

Those in the latter condition have been 
able readily to detect objects so inappreciable 
to ordinary feeling, that the ignorant, who 
witness such operation, have ever been prone 
to impute the process by which it is effected 
to a degree of prophetic inspiration. 

Smell and taste, as related to feeling, have 
manifested similar extraordinary deviations 
from their natural functions, and have no doubt 
contributed to aid that sense in some of its 
erratic and inexplicable revelations. Thus, 
atmospheric changes, serpents, cats, and other 
animals and objects, are announced by sub- 
jects endowed with such powers, when in con- 
ditions which render them concealed from all 
the senses of ordinary persons. 

Illusion, whether manifested by intellectual 
personifications, as ghosts; or by morbid asso- 
ciation of ideas, exhibiting the false reasonings 
of the insane ; or whether those of individual 
senses, as unnatural sounds, smells, tastes, or 



GHOSTS. 73 

feelings, are unquestionably dependent upon a 
degree of morbidly altered state of the brain 
in the one case, and an altered condition of 
the nerves of sense in the other. In the 
former, the disordered activity of the brain re- 
calls former sensations by the aid of memory, 
and often depicts those susceptible of form, in 
their respective representative images, as 
ghosts, &c, or combine ideas in discordant 
trains, as in dreams or delirium. 

In the instance of particular disordered 
senses, the actions of which are illusive, their 
functional representations are brought into ac- 
tivity, without the presence of the appropriate 
stimulus derived from the immediate impres- 
sion of external objects ; but effects repre- 
sentative of those, are no doubt caused by 
the impression which diseased action makes 
upon the local nerves on which specific sen- 
sible function depends. 

All illusions, therefore, whether intellectual 
or sensitive, may be considered but as indica- 
tions of a degree of disordered action of the 
whole, or a portion of the nervous system, and 
are worthy of attention mainly, in view of the 
consequences to which vitality may be sub- 
ected by an uninterrupted progress of the 
unnatural action. 

All these morbid manifestations of the brain 

and senses have ever been viewed with aston- 
7* 



74 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION, 

ishment and awe by the ignorant ; and pre- 
vious to modern improvement in physiologi- 
cal science, were subjects of wonder and wild 
speculation with the learned. Knaves and 
impostors have not failed to render them 
available sources from whence to derive facts, 
not only in support of their pretended demo- 
niacal arts and sciences, but such disordered 
subjects have too frequently been exhibited to 
the credulous as objects miraculously en- 
dowed, with the view to confirm their faith in 
religious creeds, the intrinsic demerits of 
which required extraneous support of this 
character. 

But it is to be hoped, that the era of popu- 
lar traffic in such delusions is receding before 
the extending light of a more reasoning age ; 
and that the period is not distant, when these 
affections of the nervous system shall be di- 
vested of their marvels, by having their rank 
assigned, as tangible realities, in the catalogue 
of bodily derangements requiring, no less than 
other diseases, the attentive care of the phy- 
sician. 



SECTION V. 

Ecstasy, Trance, Sfc* 

Of a character similar to that of dreams, 
are modern visions, ecstacy, and trance. The 
mutual phenomena presented in these, admit of 
a like explanation ; with the exception, how- 
ever, that the former is characterized by fan- 
ciful combinations of ideas during a state of 
sleep; the latter by extravagant exaltations of 
mental action, accompanied by like illusions, 
exhibited during a state of wakefulness. In 
these conditions, such mental abstraction from 
sense are effected by means of the preponder- 

# Ecstacy and trance have, by some nosologists, been 
considered as distinct species of a genus of the gene- 
ral class embracing all nervous diseases. This is doubt- 
less most expedient in a description having reference 
to medical treatment ; but as it is designed to notice 
them only as milder and more temporary affections, 
occurring in similarly constituted subjects, dependent 
upon an analagous state of the nervous system, and 
originating from the same, or like causes, it is deemed 
preferable and proper to notice them as varying forms 
of the same affections, presenting in their different as- 
pects, but degrees or varieties of symptoms, exhibited 
in variously constituted subjects, and modified mainly 
by the diverse application of the causes from whence 
they originate. Many of the common phenomena of 
ecstacy are manifested in several nervous affections ; 



76 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

ance of spiritual conceptions, that the reali- 
ties of both sense and reason cease to control 
combinations of thought. The active imagi- 
nation in this condition being uncontroled, per- 
sonifies beings, or depicts scenes, as realities 
which had previously been made the subject 
of intense meditation, or the objects of ardent 
hopes or fears. 

In extasy and trances, as in some forms of 
dreams, the corporeal organs sympathetically 
partaking of the excited mental state, either 
exhibit gesticulations, or other action corres- 
ponding in extravagance with the passing hal- 
lucinations ; or being deprived of their ordin- 
ary mental stimulus, yield to entire torpor and 
quiescence. 

Although imposture and deception may oc- 
casionally assume the condition represented in 
visions, ecstacy, and trance, yet there can be 
no doubt that their manifestations are mainly 
involuntary actions induced by existing im- 



trance in some others, but their forms here considered, 
essentially differ from these ; and as they possess the 
relationship alluded to, and as they are rarely the ob- 
jects of medical treatment, it is deemed far preferable 
to discuss their character in the mode here adopted. 

Somnambulism and catalepsy, although dependent 
upon similar constitutional peculiarities, but originating 
from causes of a different nature, have been noticed with 
the view only to exhibit them as possessing a character 
of relationship with the above named affections. 



ECSTASY AND TRANCE. 77 

pressions, acting upon persons nervously sus- 
ceptible, but generally of weak intellects, 
whose minds, therefore, are incapable of sus- 
taining normal combinations of thought, when 
subjects of the importance of those involving 
their spiritual destiny are impressively pre- 
sented to their consideration. 

With the object of exhibiting what have 
been denominated religious ecstasy and trance, 
as phenomena, which, like other bodily affec- 
tions, are dependent* upon natural agencies, 
such as ordinarily influence organic structure, 
a reference will briefly be made to the mental 
and physiological condition upon which they 
are conceived to be dependent This refer- 
ence is made for the purpose of dissipating the 
marvels and superstition with which they 
have been habitually contemplated by many, 
and to combat what is believed an error of the 
most vital import, — the prevailing belief that 
they are the product of an active supernatural 
inspiration. 

It is a characteristic trait of the mind, that 
when long intently occupied on any particu- 
lar subject, it is prone to fall into a monoto- 
nous train of thought, (so to speak,) which 
eventually becomes so predominant as to en- 
gross its entire attention, to the exclusion of 
objects ordinarily brought to its notice by the 
senses. So predominant frequently becomes 



78 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

the influence of these engrossing trains of 
thought, in biasing the judgment, that by ex- 
cluding a comparison with the trains of sensa- 
tion of diverse character, its decisions are of- 
ten extremely erroneous, and even fantastic 
and ridiculous. 

Every inordinate emotion and passion, of 
sudden production, or when indulged in a less 
degree for a considerable period, tends to 
produce this unnatural obliquity in mental 
decision. # 

The mind, when engaged in a continued 
concentration of its powers, is apt to depict 
the objects of its contemplation with such 
factitious coloring, that by the exaggerations of 
the imagination, they are represented as ac- 
tually present personifications ; or simple 
ideas are combined in such a manner that an- 
ticipated future results are exhibited as actual 
realities in progress of instant performance. 
Thus anxiety regarding health frequently de- 
picts results of disease, whether real or im- 
aginary, which have no existence except as 
morbid conceptions of the intellect which 
originates them. So unnatural, occasionally, 
are the exaggerations of the imagination, 
when stimulated by mental anxiety regarding 
health, that its subjects are led to the convic- 
tion of organic changes of structure, incom- 
patible with the continuance of life, and often 



ECSTASY AND TRANCE. 79 

of metamorphoses to other states of being, 
These fantastic conceits not unfrequently ex- 
ist in a degree that they not only excite the 
commisseration, but the ridicule of friends, and 
often repel the logic and skill of the medical 
adviser aimed at their removal. 

Anger and hatred distort their objects, and 
the motives that have aroused their energies 
into fictions of their own engendering, which 
stimulate to acts the most disproportionate to 
the offence, and therefore become unjustifia- 
ble. Jealousy often so obscures the rational 
data on which accurate conclusions may be 
based, that imagination magnifies 

" Trifles light as air," 

into 

" Confirmations strong as proofs from Holy writ." 

The avaricious propensity eventually en- 
grosses the active faculties of the mind, and 
visions of wealth, or the horrors of poverty, 
stimulate to indefinite acquisition, as an im- 
aginary good worthy the endurance of the 
most unnatural and painful privations, and 
even causes a sacrifice of integrity to a prac- 
tice of the basest moral obliquities. Pride 
and ambition, when inordinately indulged, pre- 
sent their objects in a form so alluring, that 
fame or self is represented as alone worthy of 
consideration, and the benevolent and social 
feelings become sacrificed in their giddy vortex. 



80 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

These derangements of the mental affec- 
tions, as results of ordinary impulses and inci- 
dents of life, are often sufficient to unhinge 
the mind to a degree that the most wild 
hallucinations control its actions and conclu- 
sions. 

There are influences, however, which act 
upon the mind, when diverted to certain trains 
of reflection, with a force more impressive and 
energetic, and which engross its attention 
more exclusively than the objects ordinarily 
submitted to its attention. Such are those 
which are derived from a contemplation of the 
future responsibilities of man, as regards his 
spiritual and eternal destinies, and the rewards 
and penalties which are presented to his view 
in that state. 

These subjects, when presented to the*im- 
agination with a force adequate to excite the 
mind to an exclusive and intense concentra- 
tion, are susceptible of arousing the passions 
to a state of extravagant exaltation, which 
precludes attention to the ordinary impres- 
sions made on the senses, and leads, not un- 
frequently, to a manifestation of bodily action 
corresponding with the existing trains of ex- 
cited ideas. This is the state which has re- 
ceived the denomination of ecstasy. A dif- 
ferent degree of affection, from the same 
causes, but operating in varfed force, or upon 



ECSTASY AND TRANCE. 81 

subjects differently constituted, may have the 
effect to suppress the corporeal powers, while 
the active conceptions, (moulded by a like ex- 
cited imagination,) are depicted as present 
personalities of the spiritual world, performing 
in fancied characters, whose actions ever cor- 
respond with the train of ideas passing in the 
mind, from which imagination derives its plas- 
tic materials. This is the affection termed 
religious trance, and may be considered the 
more advanced stage of the ecstatic condi- 
tion described above. 

These singular manifestations of an engross- 
ing religious meditation, are generally induced 
by impressive representations of future happi- 
ness or misery through eloquent appeals to the 
passions of persons possessing a highly excita- 
ble nervous temperament. These, from natural 
infirmity of judgment, are often incapable of 
exercising a rational discretion on occasions in 
which their active emotions are aroused. More 
rarely they originate from self-directed medi- 
tation on the subject of future rewards and 
punishments, excited by attention to former 
vivid impressions, recalled by the aid of mem- 
ory ; or by a lively reflection upon the impor- 
tant facts having relation to their spiritual re- 
sponsibilities. Whatever may have been the 
influence by which the mind has been indu- 
ced to its excited train of meditations, it be- 

8 



82 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

comes temporarily inadequate for the per- 
formance of its accustomed discriminating de- 
cision ; and what is most singular, the fic- 
tions which are embraced in this state, are 
generally adopted as facts in its history, after 
a restoration to its normal condition.* 



* It has ever been a mooted question with metaphy- 
sicians, whether the mind, during its corporeal connec- 
tion, at any time exists in a state of total inactivity or 
thoughtless quiescence. It has been contended by 
some, that in every condition of sleep, however pro- 
found, or grave disease of the brain, as apoplexy, &c. 
combinations of ideas continue in a degree of activity ; 
but that their trains, in a state of deep natural sleep, or 
in the apparent unconsciousness of disease, are only 
incapable of being recalled on the change to a state of 
wakefulness, in consequence of the failure of memory 
to record them on its tablet. In such view, it is only 
the mental acts of imperfect sleep, or less grave dis- 
ease, which become the subject of recollection on their 
removal. Others suppose that mental action, in the 
more sound forms of sleep, or in the deep lethargy of 
disease, participate of the torpor which enchains the 
action of the senses, and becomes, like these, dormant 
and inactive. 

If the latter theory is correct, it is manifest that a 
temporary blank is produced in the history of mental 
action, during each affection of causes producing this 
temporary sympathy with its corporeal consociate. Al- 
though evidence may be wanting to disprove this last 
position, yet (whether considered as a positive or nega- 
tive argument) it can be made but little available in 
proof of skeptical materialism. 

It must appear manifest, that during its union with 
matter, the mind is in a dependent position, and must 



ECSTASY AND TRANCE. 83 

Although a due degree of zeal may actuate 
the subjects thus demonstrably affected, yet 



necessarily, from the nature of the connection, be sub- 
jected by sympathy to the various affections which in- 
fluence the latter ; consequently, the mind is in a de- 
gree made subject to the laws by which matter is gov- 
erned. 

Whatever judgment, therefore, may be formed of the 
action or affection of the twb agents in a state of con- 
nection, it is inapplicable to that of either, when a dis- 
solution of such union is effected. For the mind hav- 
ing, by such event, escaped the grosser sympathies in 
which it held participation, must be presumed to re- 
cover the capabilities of its own inherent and subtle na- 
ture, and to act in conformity with its specific and in- 
dependent laws ; as it is manifest, from observation, that 
matter reverts to the control of the physical agencies, 
when vitality withholds its superior influence. 

Inductive reasoning must lead to the conclusion, that 
the union of agencies ordinarily subjected to independ- 
ent diverse laws, would result in a mode of action es- 
sentially modified from that of each, when solely gov- 
erned by its original influences. We accordingly find 
in the connection of matter, vitality, and mind, as exist- 
ing in a state of organization, that the former (during 
such union) acquires properties not existing in its ordi- 
nary inorganic condition ; and at the dissolution of the 
connection, it manifestly assumes the more limited and 
inferior abilities derived from its ordinary specific laws. 
It is therefore a reasonable conclusion, that the superior 
agent, the mind, (which in the condition of union had 
suffered restraint from its grosser associate,) would re- 
gain its native powers by the assumption of the ac- 
tion permitted by the law of its original nature. It 
may then be conceived, that, as in trance or ecstasy, 



84 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

there is reason to fear, that many of their num- 
ber are self-deceived enthusiasts, wanting in 
profitable knowledge, who therefore have ad- 
mitted the natural promptings of a highly ex- 
cited imagination, as evidence of a degree of 
inspiration and divine favoritism, which has 
been denied the more rational cultivators of 
genuine spiritual devotion. 

Religion, as being the practical science of a 
future state, ought, unquestionably, to be an 
object of primary consideration, and its culti- 
vation and acquirement becomes the duty of 



which has been induced by inordinate causes affecting 
the mind, the influence of this should, in a degree, ac- 
quire an ascendancy over its material associate, and 
thereby, temporarily, be enabled to act from the ability 
derived from its own independent laws of action ; or 
that in case of bodily infirmity, in which the mind has 
escaped a sympathizing action, its power should acquire 
a like preponderance, and exercise energies accordant 
with its untrammeled abilities. In either supposition 
it will be observed, that the effect might be a like ex- 
tension of ordinary mental capability, provided the di- 
verse causes produced a like suspension of their rela- 
tive dependencies, through which the action of each re- 
ceives essential modification, and indeed controls all 
their consociate actions. 

The above, however, is only a speculative sugges- 
tion ; but may not be wholly unworthy of consideration 
in a contemplation of the abstruse phenomena of the 
animal economy, as well as to meet the arguments, 
equally speculative, adduced by materialists in the sup- 
port of their depressing and gloomy creed. 



ECSTASY AND TRANCE. 85 

every rational responsible being. The evi- 
dence of its possession, however, is by no 
means exhibited in these passionate demon- 
strations; but it is more convincingly mani- 
fested by a rational contemplation of its re- 
quirements, and a consistent conformity of 
the human attributes to the laws of Deity, 
enstamped both in nature and revelation. 
These, only, intellect recognizes as based upon 
principles of a reason worthy the infinite In- 
telligence whence they emanated. 

The founders of the various fanatical sects 
have well understood the power which the 
faculty of veneration is capable of exercising 
over the passions and imagination. They have 
therefore craftily constructed their tenets and 
formularies, in a manner whereby they have 
availed themselves of its influence for the ac- 
quisition of proselytes to their creeds. Hence 
Mormonism is enforced by its appeals to its 
immediate revelations, and its marvelous gift 
of tongues; and most of its devotees, no 
doubt through the influence of the mental 
principle suggested and biased by the con- 
ceits of a vivid imagination, conceive them- 
selves the participants of the marvelous gift. 
It is likewise probable, that the hallucination 
which leads them to embrace the absurd doc- 
trine, imbues the senseless jargon which they 

8* 



8G CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

invent, with abounding ideas of the most grave 
import. 

The impostor Matthias proclaimed his own 
nature as partaking of the divine essence, and 
his brutish eccentricities, through the exagge- 
rating medium of a morbidly active imagina- 
tion, appeared to his followers (some of 
whom possessed otherwise respectable intel- 
lectual capacities) as satisfactory evidence of 
his claims. The bliss of Mahomet's sensual 
paradise was depicted with such intensity, in 
the visions of his fanatic soldiers, as to cause 
them to disregard, temporal life, so far as to 
rush to destruction in battle, with the view to 
enter upon its immortal enjoyment.* 

# At the siege of a fortress (the name of which is not 
within the recollection of the author) by the Turkish 
army, under one of their most victorious and distin- 
guished sultans, the besiegers became dispirited, in con- 
sequence of the failure of their variously repeated as- 
saults for its reduction, and were on the eve of aban- 
doning the hopeless undertaking. At this juncture, a 
private soldier, inspired by his religious as well as pat- 
riotic zeal, announced to his comrades that he beheld a 
vision of the black eyed houris of Mahomet's paradise, 
beckoning them to an embrace, from the tops of the lofty 
turreted walls of the besieged. The entranced enthu- 
siast rushed forward, at the same time to the wall and 
to death, followed by his comrades, who had imbibed 
the sympathetic contagion, and who immediately shared 
the same fate. The infection became general in the 
army, and a furious assault of the castle ensued, which, 



ECSTASY AND TRANCE. 87 

In the mental phenomena of dreams, ghosts, 
insanity and trance, there exists no inconsid- 
erable degree of relationship. Each are 
characterized by the similar illusory images 
which are attendant. They are, however, di- 
verse as regards the causes, and the physical 
condition from which they originate. The 
former have been noticed as consisting of an 
incongruous combination of sensations in store 
in the mind, in a state of sleep, without the 
immediate action of the senses ; though the 
passing dreamy trains may be essentially in- 
fluenced and varied by suggestions directed 
through these.* Dreams are conducted in- 



after a desperate resistance by the besieged, and a fear- 
ful carnage of the assailants, was demolished, and its 
brave defenders fell a sacrifice to the almost superhu- 
man energies excited by the illusive vision of the 
fanatic. 

* In sleep, whether attended by dreams or not, the 
attention is suspended by the existing torpor ; there- 
fore, impressions made on the senses are not recognized, 
except as suggestive of objects connected with the 
trains of thought passing in the mind, or as having the 
effect to change the trains to others having a relation to 
the impressions made. The senses have not unfrequently 
thus been employed to extort secrets from dreamers, in 
the unguarded condition of the mind in sleep. Thus 
whispering in the ear of a dreamer, will often obtain a 
pertinent reply to questions relative to the passing 
mental action. A person entering the room of a sleeper, 
often suggests a dream of intended violence and rob- 



88 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

dependent of the corrections of attention, 
which is ever quiescent in a state of sleep ; 
hence arises the disconnected chain of events 
which transpire in mental activity of sleep. 
Ghosts have been considered as illusory im- 
ages, or personifications, represented to the 
mind in a state of wakefulness. These are de- 
pendent for existence upon a disordered con- 
dition of the brain and nervous system, hold- 
ing no further importance than the indications 
which they furnish of the morbid actions 
which give them existence. 

Religious trance is, likewise, usually at- 
tended with a variety of personified images, 
produced by a state of excited mental activity, 
mostly of a spiritual nature, occurring in in- 
dividuals of imaginative, rather than rational 
susceptibilities. These are excited by exter- 
nal impressions directed through the passions, 
or by concentrated attention to subjects re- 
lating to future responsibilities. Like the 



bery. Taste, odors, or cutaneous irritation, &c. fre- 
quently change the existing dreamy associations to 
others suggested by the new sensitive irritation. Such 
impressions, however, instead of directing the mind to 
the action of objects really present, from which they 
originate, serve but to stimulate to combinations of 
ideas previously existing on its tablet, which are con- 
nected with the sense irritated, or with which it has 
been associated. 



ECSTASY AND TRANCE. 89 

visions, in case of ghosts, these occur in a state 
of wakefulness; but unlike those of dreams, 
or insanity, a connection is sustained in the 
train, in consequence of their being con- 
ducted by the attention which, in the others, 
is wanting or is desultory. 

As the visions of ecstasy and trance are the 
suggestions of a devotional propensity, they 
are generally attended with affections, such as 
a lively imagination would naturally depict of 
the realms of bliss or misery. Accordingly it 
will be found, that the drama exhibited to the 
conceptions of the enthusiast, ever holds a 
correspondence in extravagance with the ex- 
alted state of the mental affection which is in- 
strumental in its induction. As in dreams, 
the scenes represented in trance or ecstasy 
are dependent on the causes which suggest 
and originate the phenomena; but as the last 
are conducted under the direction of a vigo- 
rous attention, a far greater consistency of the 
passing trains is manifested. 

An essential diversity exists between the 
manifestations of ecstasy and trance ; the one 
being an exhibition of rapturous exclama- 
tion, accompanied with excited and extrava- 
gant corporeal action ; while the mind, in the 
other, being so intently occupied with the 
personifications presented for its contempla- 
tion, withdraws its influence from the body, 



90 CREDULITY A.ND SUPERSTITION. 

and suffers it to remain in a state of inaction. 
The primary cause, however, of both being 
the same, they are to be considered as but dif- 
ferent forms or degrees of the same affection, 
producing their various results mainly through 
the force of circumstances in which the im- 
pressions are made, and the diversity of tem- 
perament presented in different individuals af- 
fected. Ecstasy is that stage of the affection 
which may be considered incipient, in which 
the mind is more partially withdrawn from 
the dominion of the senses, although their 
impressions are but little, or in no degree, the 
subject of attention, in consequence of the 
concentration of mental conception on ob- 
jects of a supernatural character. The atten- 
tion is so directed to the hallucinations pres- 
ent, that sensible impression is disregarded, 
unless applied in more than ordinary force. 
In such case, attention may temporarily be 
given to ordinary sensation ; but so predomi- 
nant is the mental train, that it immediately 
reclaims the attention, on the diminution of 
the cause of its arrest. 

In the more advanced stage of the affec- 
tion of trance, insensibility to external im- 
pressions exists, often nearly representing a 
state of death. The vital functions are per- 
formed with diminished energy ; the eyes be- 
come fixed, though the countenance may ap- 



ECSTASY AND TRANCE. 91 

pear otherwise but little changed; and the mus- 
cular system is immovable, to a degree that 
the limbs usually remain in the position where 
placed. Indeed there is little doubt, that 
many have suffered vital inhumation in this 
often death-simulating condition. On the 
contrary, in religious trance, as in ecstasy, 
the mind is occasionally in a preternaturally 
elevated state, and its conceptions become 
magnified into a conceived arena, within 
which are introduced by the imagination, the 
greatest variety of spiritual images and ob- 
jects in dramatic performance. So vivid are 
sometimes the conceptions in trance, (as would 
appear from the relation of its visions,) that the 
mind or soul of its subjects seems endowed 
with temporary energies, surpassing those 
manifested as the joint products with its now 
inert earthly tenement. The combination of 
thought in ideal pictures possesses such activity, 
that, in conception, space becomes annihilated 
and the mental wanderer, in imagination, is 
transported to the regions of his contempla- 
tion, (which is most commonly heaven or hell,) 
and his affections are accordant with the fan- 
cied scenes amid w 7 hich he mingles.* 



* The maid of Orleans, the celebrated Joan of Arc, 
was undoubtedly an ecstatic enthusiast, whose visions 
were the natural inspirations of an ardent devotional 



92 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

Several diseases, as hysteria, insanity, epi- 
lepsey, &c; many poisonous drugs, as alcohol, 

temperament, aided by a patriotic zeal for the salvation 
of the liberties of her country. That she was herself a 
designing impostor, few will believe; but it is more 
questionable whether she was not the dupe of govern- 
ment agencies, employed as an instrument for arousing 
a languid French patriotism to a resistance of English 
oppression. There is little doubt that she entertained 
full confidence in the inspiration which she announced, 
and likewise that she was the heavenly commissioned 
agent for the protection of her country's liberty. 

Whatever may have been the opinion of the French 
king and his advisers, relative to her claims, it is certain 
that she possessed popular confidence in the divine 
agency which she assumed. The result of such belief 
strikingly illustrates the superiority which spiritual con- 
ceptions, when brought into activity, hold over those of 
a temporal nature, in exciting the mind to energetic 
action. It is probable that the main facts, giving ori- 
gin to this strange history, will ever remain concealed ; 
but though the causes which led to its development 
were manifestly illusion, with, perhaps, the aid of device, 
the effects possessed a reality and importance no less 
than that of the restoration of liberty and distinction to 
a nation previously existing in a state of degradation 
and oppression. The entire transaction is an illustra- 
tion of the adage, that " truth is often more strange 
than fiction." 

As the case of the Maid of Orleans was doubtless 
one representing the ecstatic form of trance, another 
may be mentioned strongly illustrative of the more 
grave and visibly inanimate degree of the affection ; in 
which ordinary physical action had apparently ceased, 
while that of the mind had assumed an expanded range, 
accordant with a conception of its mode of operation 



ECSTASY AND TRANCE. 93 

opium, hyoscyamus, thorn apple, (stramonium,) 
hemlock, (cicuta,) and some others, occasion- 



when freed from its corporeal embarrassment. It is 
during such affection that its action appears as under 
the guidance of its own peculiar laws of action. The 
case is that of Henry Engelbrecht, as related by him- 
self, and may be found in Blackwood's Magazine, May 
No., 1847. 

" In the year 1G23, exhausted by intense mental ex- 
citement of a religious kind, and by abstinence from 
food, after hearing a sermon which strongly affected 
him, he felt as if he could combat no more, so he gave 
in and took to his bed. There he lay a week without 
tasting any thing but the bread and wine of the sacra- 
ment. On the eighth day, he thought he fell into the 
death struggle ; death seemed to invade him from be- 
low upwards ; his body became rigid ; his hands and feet 
insensible ; his tongue and lips incapable of motion ; 
gradually his sight failed him, but he still heard the la- 
ments and consultations of those around him. This 
gradual demise lasted from mid-day till eleven at night, 
when he heard the watchman ; then he lost conscious- 
ness of outward impressions. But an elaborate vision 
of immense detail began ; the theme of which was, 
that he was first carried down to hell, and looked into 
the place of torment ; from thence, quicker than an ar- 
row, was he borne to paradise. In these abodes of suf- 
fering and happiness, he saw and heard and smelled 
things unspeakable. Those scenes, though long in ap- 
prehension, were short in time, for he came enough to 
himself by twelve o'clock, again to hear the watchman. 
It took him another twelve hours to come round en- 
tirely. His hearing was first restored ; then his sight ; 
feeling and motion followed ; as soon as he could move 
his limbs he rose. He felt himself stronger than before 
the trance." 



94 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

ally resemble trance and ecstasy in the pro- 
duction of similar false images, mental exalta- 
tion, and bodily immobility. While, however, 
the false conceptions induced by disease, or 
drugs, are desultory combinations of ideal trains, 
bearing a resemblance to those of dreams, the 
visions of ecstasy and trance are arranged in 
consistent connection, and though usually 
originating from external impressions made 
through the senses of sight and hearing, they 
may be continued to an indefinite period, solely 
by ideas of consciousness. While, likewise, 
the mental images resulting from disease and 
medicines are painful or agreeable, in accord- 
ance with the character of the bodily stimu- 
lus by which they are prompted, and usually 
subside on the termination of the morbid ac- 
tions which give them origin, the spiritual ar- 
ray (being the product of emotion, unaccom- 
panied by diseased action,) commonly contin- 
ues in normal and consistent trains, until in- 
terrupted or dissevered, either by overpower- 



This case, while it exhibits the phenomena of trance, 
at the same time goes far to demonstrate, that it is a 
peculiar condition of the nervous system upon which it 
is dependent ; as it will appear manifest, that the as- 
cetic life, and bodily exhaustion, from insufficient diet, 
&c. under which they occurred, were causes well suited 
to induce the morbid susceptibility with which, it has 
been contended, the affection is connected. 



ECSTASY AND TRANCE. 95 

ing corporeal impressions, acting through the 
senses, or by the exhaustion of the cerebral 
force by which they are sustained. 

The difference of effect following the sub- 
sidence of hallucinations from diseased ac- 
tion, and the emotion producing trance, con- 
sists in the greater or less debilitated condi- 
tion of the system, (occasioned by the latter,) 
arising from the unnatural action during its 
affection, while in trance the functions are 
little impaired, because, (during its continu- 
ance,) they have remained in a state of inac- 
tion and repose. This preservation of vital 
functions in trance, however, exists only in 
cases of quiescence of the body, as in the con- 
dition of its extatic activity, from the passing 
emotion, and the active scenes pictured to the 
mind, it must necessarily (as a condition of 
its nature) suffer a degree of exhaustion. 

It has been stated, that in the state of 
trance there exists an entire subsidence of 
voluntary action, during which the vital func- 
tions are performed with diminished force. 
This is owing to the withdrawal from these 
of a portion of their ordinary nervous influ- 
ence, for the sustentation of the exalted mental 
energy in the production of the visions which 
engross the mind's attention. This explanation 
is derived from a recognized principle of the 
animal economy, that exalted concentrated 



96 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

action existing in an organ, can alone be 
sustained by a withdrawal of that ordinarily 
assigned for the support of the functions of 
its associates; and hence, inductive reasoning, 
from the known existence of this physiologi- 
cal law, would lead to the conclusion, that 
bodily torpor, like that witnessed in a state 
of trance, would be the result of the highly 
concentrated mental action constituting the 
principal phenomena of the affection. 

The various degrees of affection manifested 
between the active demonstrations of ecstasy 
and trance, have heretofore been referred to 
the varied effects of circumstances and tem- 
perament. In aid of these influences may be 
mentioned an important agency in determin- 
ing the character of these phenomena, derived 
from the relative susceptibilities existing in 
different individuals, between the brain and 
nervous system. In this view, persons of 
greater cerebral impressibility, through favor- 
ing causes, will present the manifestations of 
more marked trance, with its array of illusory 
visions, while ecstasy, with its varying de- 
grees of corporeal action, is the effect of simi- 
lar causes, acting upon persons whose ner- 
vous systems (the primary agents of animal 
motion) possess preponderating susceptibili* 
ties. 



ECSTACY AND TRANCE. 97 

In the notice of dreams and ghosts, as pre- 
monitory indications of coming events, it was 
objected, that their vague and indefinite indi- 
cations failed to render them advantageous to 
their subjects, and therefore, that the dubious 
intimations were irreconcilable with the 
divine benevolent economy conceived as 
prompting the unavailable admonition. An 
argument derivable from the same source, and 
of similar application, is worthy'of considera- 
tion in an investigation of the subject of reli- 
gious trance. It is presumed as not claimed, 
that the supposed inspiration of this affection, 
imparts a revelation of superior precepts for 
the direction of the spiritual devotion of its 
favored recipients. It is, therefore, difficult to 
discern in such manifestations, a wise and be- 
nevolent object, as it must appear evidently 
partial and discriminating in the distribution 
of favors to christian professors, and manifest- 
ly in derogation of the attributes ascribed to 
the common impartial Father of their faith. 

Indeed, as facts are wanting which prove 
that the subjects of religious trance excel their 
more sedate and reasoning brethren in their 
perseverance in faith, and in the practice of 
the christian graces ; and as observation will 
show that the affection is chiefly, if not ex- 
clusively, manifested in persons of nervously 

9* 



98 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

excitable temperament, it may be considered 
as an established fact, that the phenomena of 
trance are worthy of interest, mainly, as being 
demonstrable of the physiological, or perhaps 
pathological singularities, occasionally mani- 
fested by the brain and nervous system, rather 
than as spiritual impressions derived from a 
supernatural source.* 

Notwithstanding, however, the views which 
have been giVen of trance and its phenomena, 
it is little probable that a large portion of its 
subjects merit a rank among deceivers and 
impostors ; (a charge not unfrequently made ;) 
but rather they ought generally to be viewed 
with commisseration and sympathy, as enthu- 
siasts who are denied the physical ability of 
sustaining an equipoise of intellect, when con- 
templating a subject which, above all others, 

* A writer in Blackwood's Magazine, June No. 1847, 
thus justly remarks : " Without at all comprehending 
the real character of the power called into play, man- 
kind seems to have found out, by a * mera palpatio/ by 
instinctive experiment and lucky groping in the dark, 
that in the stupor of trance, the mind occasionally stum- 
bles upon odds and ends of strange knowledge and 
prescience. The phenomenon was never for an in- 
stant suspected of lying in the order of nature. It was 
construed to suit the occasion and times, either into di- 
vine inspiration, or diabolical whisperings. But it 
was always supernatural." 



ECSTASY AND TRANCE. 99 

demands a dispassionate consideration, as in- 
volving eternal destiny.* 

Somnambulism, or sleep walking, is a form 
of trance differing from those mentioned, as 
it occurs during the ordinary sleep of the 
senses, and is doubtless the production of a 
degree of internal bodily derangement. In 
this affection, the faculties of the mind are in 
a state of activity, while the senses are locked 
in the torpor of sleep. The corporeal organs, 
however, are stimulated to action by the en- 
ergy of the mental trains controling volition, 
and prompting it to act in conformity with the 
passing conceptions and trains of thought. 
A variety of acts are often executed in this 
condition, of which, as in dreams, previous 
waking thoughts are the prototypes; but 



* It is not designed in the above discussion of the 
character of dreams, visions, &c. to include or question 
the authenticity, or impair the belief of those announced 
in the scriptures as prophetic revelations. These were 
exhibited under circumstances, and accompanied with 
internal and external evidence, of a character wholly 
wanting in those here rejected as factitious and spuri- 
ous. As it is conceived that the period of miracles and 
prophecy has long since ceased, it is deemed useful 
that the modern notions, which impute to these ordi- 
nary and extraordinary vital manifestations, a prophetic 
character, should be combatted by such existing phy- 
siological and pathological facts as are believed ade- 
quate for the solution of their phenomena. 



100 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

which, not unfrequently, are of a character 
that might render them difficult of perform- 
ance by the affected individual in his ordinary 
condition. A sort of intellectual sense ap- 
pears to supply the office of the natural senses 
in these cases, by which opposing objects are 
avoided, and expedients are embraced, for the 
furtherance of plans in progress of execution, 
with an accuracy equaling those of sensible 
dictation. This form of the affection resem- 
bles dreams, by its being the execution, or 
performance in action, of ideas previously ex- 
isting in the mind ; but it holds the distinction 
of its trains of action by, and being conducted 
under the supervision of a wakeful attention, 
and, therefore, possessing consistency in their 
combinations. It resembles both religious 
trance and ecstasy, by its union of the con- 
sistent mental activity of the one, with the 
corporeal action of the other. An exalted 
state of mental combination is evinced, during 
the affection, by the elevated positions, as the 
roofs of buildings, precipices, &c. which its 
subjects often seek, as well as by the daring 
feats which they not unfrequently encounter. 
A distinction consists, in its objects usually 
being those of the temporal, instead of the 
spiritual world. 

It has been the surprising fortune of som- 
nambulism that, although its manifestations 



ECSTASY AND TRANCE. 101 

possess a singularity far surpassing those of 
dreams, and often equaling those of ghosts 
and its correlative, religious trance, yet little 
superstition has been attached to its charac- 
ter and phenomena, while the others have 
ever been a prolific source of supernatural 
reference, and have, by the credulous, been 
objects of awe and wonder, and not unfre- 
quently of dread and apprehension. 

The more grave form of trance is the ner- 
vous disease termed catalepsy, in which both 
the corporeal and mental powers, especially 
the latter, appear temporally in a state of to- 
tal extinction, such as has, occasionally, been 
difficult of discrimination from actual dissolu- 
tion. This, like most other diseases of the 
nervous class, arises from morbid causes, af- 
fecting particularly the functions of the brain 
and nervous system, and, like them, is to be 
viewed with apprehension, as regards its re- 
sults on life. As the description of this form 
of trance is pathological, and would embrace 
a professional detail of causes and effects of 
disease, it will be omitted, as not accordant 
with the adopted plan of discussion. 



SECTION VI. 

Empiricim and Quackery — Credulity in Medi- 
cine. 

If man's inherent credulity and love of the 
marvelous have been made instrumental in 
subjugating his reason, by means of a facti- 
tious theology and a ghostly machinery, ef- 
fected by a perversion of his religious and so- 
cial instincts, they have likewise been the ave- 
nues through which his legitimate temporal 
interests have been assailed by designing pre- 
tenders to his welfare, in matters connected 
with his health and life ; the instinctive love 
of which is ever, with him, an object of pri- 
mary care and solicitude. Diseases are mys- 
terious agents, the causes of which, generally, 
lie concealed among the hidden arcana of na- 
ture, and therefore have too successfully eluded 
the attempts of the wise for their development. 
Hence, in periods of ignorance they were 
conceived to be the inflictions of malign deities, 
and their removal, consequently, was sup- 
posed an appropriate duty of priests and di- 
viners, through the instrumentality of pray- 
ers, incantations, and a variety of mysterious 
agencies. 



104 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

In Greece, and, in some degree, in Rome, 
priests were the principal physicians, and 
medication was administered at the shrines of 
temples dedicated to the art of healing. There 
an adequate votive fee insured prescription 
from the presiding god himself, who was in- 
troduced to the credulous patient, doubtless 
by the optical deceptions heretofore alluded 
to ; or, in the case of patients of lesser con- 
sideration, through his intermediate agent the 
priest. It is to be presumed, however, that a 
large portion of the afflicted of disease, were 
not of sufficient consideration, or that they did 
not possess the means requisite to proffer a 
sacrifice adequate to obtain such distinguished 
prescription ; or that, in consequence of more 
grave disease, many would be unable to en- 
dure the fatigue, of a personal attendance at 
the templar fountain of health. Such were 
necessarily assigned to the care of the empirics, 
or ancient quacks. These, by confident as- 
surances, by incantations, by magic and in- 
cense, with the pretension of propitiating the 
malign deity, or, more properly, malaria, aided 
by secret nostrums, like their successors of the 
present day, did not fail speedily of termi- 
nating the disease, or the existence of their 
patients. 

Others, however, of weaker faith in mys- 
tery and the marvelous, who reasoned that 



EMPIRICISM AND QUACKERY. 105 

disease was but a physical evil, consisting in 
organic embarrassments induced by the in- 
terposition of unfriendly physical elements, 
were content with physicians possessing a 
knowledge of its nature and causes, but of 
far less pretensions. Those who, like Hy- 
pocrates and Galen, were educated in the 
rational or matter of fact schools, who pos- 
sessed the qualification of a scientific knowl- 
edge of the organic structure, its diseases, with 
their causes, and the agents which observation 
had suggested as efficacious in their removal, 
it is to be presumed, possessed the confidence 
and the patronage of their wise and reasoning 
cotemporaries. Such, disdaining to barter 
truth for a popular reputation, or temporary 
interest, have, by their labors in the field of 
science, not only added a redeeming lustre to 
human nature, but have erected to themselves 
monuments of fame, which the intelligent in 
all succeeding ages have venerated, and to 
whose names will ever be yielded a due hom- 
age of gratitude, while those of their boasting 
and popular rivals have long since passed into 
merited oblivion. 

In the period succeeding the downfall of 
the Roman Empire, in which science and lit- 
erature were nearly extinguished, delusions, 
dark and deep, took possession of the minds 
of a large portion of mankind. Reason then 

10 



106 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

appeared divested of its legitimate supremacy 
in the conduct of human actions, and knavery 
and imposture flourished with a success un- 
paralleled in the history of nations holding 
pretensions to civilization. Medical science, 
during this period, became merged in the 
grossest empiricism, and, as a consequence, the 
most absurd theories relative to diseases and 
their causes, were embraced by popular cre- 
dulity, with an avidity proportionate to their 
discordance with reason, and the less inter- 
esting deductions of common sense. 

The principal object of the pretended 
sciences of this period, seemed to be the de- 
velopment of the supposed sublime mysteries 
of alchemy and astrology. The first of these 
depicted visions of the philosopher's stone, to 
which knavery and credulity alike ascribed a 
power of transmutation of the baser metals into 
gold, the universal solvent, and the famous 
Catholicon, by whose power it was hoped, 
that a state of immortal youth might be 
sustained by its resistance to the hitherto 
mutable character of the human system; while 
the latter assumed to unfold the astral in- 
fluences on the organic system and its dis- 
eases, together with the nature of plants and 
other remedies. These, by virtue of a corres- 
ponding influence, derived from the same mys- 
terious source, were presumed appropriate to 



EMPIRICISM AND QUACKERY. 107 

sustain or restore a healthy condition of vi- 
tality. 

At a period in which follies, like these, were 
able to engross popular attention ; in which dis- 
tinction, in their so-called science, was grad- 
uated by the degree of mysticism and unintel- 
ligible jargon assumed by its professors, and 
understood neither by the deluder nor deluded, 
we need not be surprised at the ridiculous pre- 
tentions resorted to by the rival empirics, to 
promote their interests by exciting a lively 
faith in a public eager for the novelties which 
their inventions embraced. We accordingly 
find these learned worthies contending in sup- 
port of the potent virtues of mullen for the 
cure of grave diseases ; of liverwort, and a host 
of other, the most inert members of the vege- 
table kingdom. The virtues of each (it was 
contended) were derived from the occult in- 
fluence of the particular planet to whose domi- 
nancy it was assigned. What must be sup- 
posed, at that time, to have distracted the 
anxious invalid, in his choice among so many 
infallible "health restoratives? doubtless was 
the fact that, like the modern nostrum-monger, 
the advocates of each panacea adduced his 
extended catalogue of wonderful cures effected 
by his special favorite. Nor need we wonder 
that relics of saints, that amulets, and the most 
disgusting members of the animal kingdom, as 



108 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

toads, snails, spiders, bats, bugs, and many 
other abhorrent objects, should be adminis- 
tered, as of potent efficacy in arresting the 
most desperate maladies. Shakspeare, doubt- 
less, derived the recipe of the hell-broth in 
Macbeth from the medicaments of this period. 
This would have been no less abhorrent, 
though less poetical, had the principal ingre- 
dients been thus more literally enumerated : 

" Bones of saints, with slimy slugs ; 
Warts of toads, abhorrent bugs ; 
Blind worm stings, and toe of frogs ; 
Wool of bats, and tongue of dogs ; 
Spider's webs, and lizzard's legs ; 
Armed the empiric with his drugs/ ' 

It would be no less tedious than unprofit- 
able to enumerate the various arts by which 
the credulous public, eager for novelty, were 
deluded by the quacks of this period, distin- 
guished for its excesses of mental delusion. 
That some of their patients survived their 
ordeal is probable ; but that a much larger 
portion were victims to the confidence re- 
posed in their contemptible nostrums, there 
can be no rational doubt. The philosophic 
physician is enabled to perceive, from facts 
derived from his common observation, that 
their various formula of prescription might 
prove efficacious in many diseases of the ner- 



EMPIRICISM AND QUACKERY. 109 

vous system, requiring the excitement of strong 
mental emotion. This their disgusting ex- 
hibitions could not fail to arouse, as their mys- 
ticisms and incantations would, doubtless, in- 
duce such superstitious awe, as to prove a 
necessary and adequate stimulus to excite the 
torporized vital energies of the system in which 
the malady alone consisted. In such condi- 
tions of disease, the cure, by these means, 
ceases to be a marvel. For it is not difficult 
to conceive that, when aided by the faith in- 
spired by the blind assurance of the quack, 
such mental remedy, with the credulous, may 
surpass, in its effects on particular diseases, 
any rational prescription, unattended by the 
emotion which the mysterious agent excites in 
the mind of the confiding expectant of its 
power. 

Baglivi, an old but distinguished physi- 
cian, quaintly remarks on this subject, " I can 
scarcely express how much the conversation 
of the physician influences even the life of 
the patient, and modifies his complaints. For 
a physician powerful in speech, and skillful in 
addressing the feelings of his patient, adds so 
much to the power of his remedies, and ex- 
cites so much confidence in his treatment, as 
frequently to overcome powerful diseases with 
very feeble remedies; which more learned 
doctors, languid and indifferent in speech, 
10* 



110 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

could not have cured with the best remedies 
that man could produce." 

There is no question but that most of the 
success which attends empiricism, results from 
the mental influences with which its prescrip- 
tions are accompanied. But as most diseases 
consist in such derangements, either of struc- 
ture or function, as require, in addition to this, 
the application of appropriate remedies, it is 
deplorable to contemplate the multiform evils 
which must necessarily have accrued to health 
and life by the neglect of these, in conse- 
quence of the bestowal of a misguided confi- 
dence in the pretended specifics of the em- 
piric, which, if not directly noxious, are inef- 
ficient and worthless. 

If, in the dark ages of literature, empiri- 
cism of the grossest character usurped the 
functions of medical science, and introduced 
the grossest superstitions relative to diseases 
and their cures, modern periods are not with- 
out parallels of medical credulity, equally gross 
and irrational, though varying in the forms in 
which it is exhibited. By adverting to the 
present state of medicine, we shall be able to 
derive abundant evidence of a predominant 
propensity, in a large portion of mankind, for 
the captivating influence of the novel and the 
marvelous, in matters relating to health, as 
well as for the existence of knaves who cater 



EMPIRICISM AND QUACKERY. HI 

to amiable weakness, for the purpose of ob- 
taining fame and fortune as the reward of 
their unholy avocation. 

If the present period affords too much 
knowledge to admit of being deluded by 
charms, by saintly relics, or by the incanta- 
tions of the magician, we shall find, in forms 
adapted to the varied condition of society, 
quacks and nostrum-mongers, who with arts 
no less deceptive, and with impudence in no 
degree degenerated from that of their occult 
predecessors, proffering their nostrums and 
panaceas to the credulous, with assurances of 
results on disease, partaking little less of the 
marvelous and supernatural than those for- 
merly claimed for charms and necromantic 
incantations. 

With the view of demonstrating the evils 
which are imposed upon society by the quack 
and nostrum monger, it is deemed useful 
briefly to allude to some individual devices, 
by which such evils are disguised. Although 
it is an acknowledged detraction from the dig- 
nity of a philosophical discussion, to descend 
to a specific notice of objects so unworthy as 
the impostor ; or to instance the arts by which 
his object is attained ; yet it may be deemed 
a sufficient apology, that not only the inter- 
ests, but the health and happiness of com- 
munity, are more or less the penalty of afford- 



112 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

ing encouragement to the nefarious arts which 
are the secret of his success. Presuming 
upon an innate propensity in mankind for 
novelty and mystery, these will be found an 
infallible accompaniment of the pretended dis- 
coveries of the empiric. But lest even this 
might fail to delude the less sanguine to prof- 
fer their pecuniary sacrifice at the shrine of 
the worthy discoverer, each nostrum, in addi- 
tion to this, and the most unblushing assu- 
rance of its infallibility, is ushered forth with 
captivating mottoes, imposing appellatives, and 
a host of fictitious, purchased, or volunteered 
attestations* of their marvel workings in the 



# It is to be regretted that these impositions of the 
quack should so frequently receive the patronage and 
attesting recommendations of men acknowledged as 
enlightened and scientific in their respective profes- 
sions. Although this is in a degree chargeable upon 
individuals of the various professions, it is presumed 
more especially true as regards those of the clerical 
profession. This is evidenced from witnessing, more 
frequently, their names appended to the certificates and 
public announcements of the quack and nostrum-mon- 
ger, and the fact, that some even venture upon an in- 
discriminate prescription of their nostrums ! (A pre- 
scription is certainly indiscriminate, when proffered as a 
general curative agent for all diseases, like most nos- 
trums, when prescribed by those ignorant of their com- 
position.) This may well excite surprise, since it would 
appear that a more than ordinary jealousy of lay inter- 
ference in the doctrinal tenets of theology is manifested 



EMPIRICISM AND QUACKERY. 113 

removal of diseases the most incurable. Not- 
withstanding, however, the variety of "infal- 
lible" agents for their cure, announced from 
generation to generation, these diseases still, 
with unabated voracity, prey upon life, and 
hurry, with undiminished speed, their victims 
to the tomb. Notwithstanding, too, the thou- 
sands of " health restoratives" "purifiers of the 



in this profession. When, too, it is considered, that in 
most of our collegiate institutions, the rudiments of 
anatomy and physiology are taught as an accomplish- 
ment in general science, it might be expected that the 
very imperfect knowledge of these subjects there re- 
ceived, would rather intimidate than give confidence 
in an interference with a mechanism in which they 
have had exhibited but a view of its extreme delicacy 
and complication, without having been taught its most 
intimate relations, or the character of the agents which 
are adapted to its several parts, when in a state of de- 
rangement. It is not intended, however, here to stig- 
matize the clerical profession with a charge of sinister 
usurpation upon the province of the physician. On 
the contrary, it is gratifying to the author to express 
his conviction, that few of the more intelligent of that 
profession habitually indulge in the hazardous experi- 
ment of prescription. So far as the reverse is the fact, 
and the clergyman is prompted to assume the respon- 
sible office of the physician, it is presumable that such 
interchange of office is dictated by humane considera- 
tions, and those feelings that originate the distinguished 
benevolence which certainly characterize the profes- 
sion, rather than with the object, ostentatiously, to dis- 
play a superiority of knowledge and general scientific 
attainments. 



114 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

blood" &c., that have appeared in this and 
all preceding ages, their deluded partakers, 
whose vitality has survived the ordeal, still 
linger invalids along the gloomy pathway of 
life ; many, no doubt, eagerly waiting some 
new will o' the wisp, by which they are to be 
led deeper into the fen which it is their object 
to avoid. 

Such captions as above specified, with nu- 
merous others equally significant, are plain 
and simple announcements of a mysterious 
agency, which the proffered medicament is 
adequate to effect. Others, with pretended 
effects no less mysterious, are ushered forth 
with a preceding mysticism, as implied in the 
question, "What is it we call the constitution V 9 
with others of a similar import. These, 
although questions gravely propounded, are 
designed as a triumphant announcement, that 
the fortunate querist has developed the im- 
portant mystery which the interrogatory in- 
volves, together with the wonderful remedy 
which is alone adequate for its preservation. 
Others are introduced to the notice of the 
public with the most expressive and signi- 
ficant appellatives of Greek derivation, as 
"panacea" or cure all ; " hygiene" or health 
restoratives, &c. ; or the less euphonious names 
of "pain killer" "poor mans plaster" &c. 
Others are not deemed unworthy of receiv- 



EMPIRICISM AND QUACKERY. 115 

ing the cognomen of the distinguished inven- 
tor himself, as " Brandreth" "Morrison" "Mof- 
fat? spills" &c. ; while, others, doubtless with 
the view to intimate the probability that they 
were revelations of Manitu or Hobomack, are 
announced with the names of " Indian pills" 
" Brant's syrup" &c. If such are boons, pos- 
sessing but a small portion of the merit pre- 
tended, it must evidently be inferred that they 
were the revelation of some benevolent In- 
dian deity; not, however, for the benefit of 
his friend, the red man, but for his oppressor, 
the "paleface." It is well known to those 
acquainted with Indian medical history, that 
chronic diseases, such as consumption, scrof- 
ula, &c, for the relief of which these Indian 
styled nostrums are announced, are entirely 
unknown to the wild tribes of that race. 
Consequently, neither a knowledge of these 
formidable diseases, nor the remedies for 
their removal, could have resulted from In- 
dian experience ; but must have been deri- 
ved, either from his peculiar instinct, or from a 
supernatural communication from the Great 
Spirit whom the Indian adores. 

As most of those mentioned are the more 
humble species of a genus under consideration, 
it may be deemed invidious to pass without 
notice the more extensive and equally pre- 
tending species, denominated steam or botanic 



116 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

doctors. While most of the former have, with 
assumed modesty, been content with less com- 
prehensive names, applied to their progeny 
only, such as vegetable pills, vegetable syrup, 
&c. : the last, with engrossing eagerness, have 
grasped whatever efficacy a distinguished 
name is capable of imparting, and personally 
assumed, as a cognomen, not only that of the 
vegetable kingdom, but likewise that additional, 
representing the most potent condition of the 
aqueous element. 

It would seem that, in jealousy lest some 
other inquisitive suitor for the favors of these 
departments of nature, should extort a portion 
of their medicinal secrets, they have insured 
the monopoly of primogeniture, by the pro- 
tection of a patent. As these, like their Indian 
titled brethren, make little pretensions to the 
dry acquisitions of science, nor even by length- 
ened experience to have explored the intimate 
character and relations of the departments 
whose names they have assumed, it may be 
presumed that, like them, their reliance for 
success with the public is upon the potent and 
popular magic of their name, aided by a belief, 
common with a portion of community, that 
inspiration, instinct, or necromancy, is most 
capable of imparting the mysteries of the ani- 
mal economy ; the nature of the diseases to 
which it is subject; and likewise of indicating 



EMPIRICISM AND QUACKERY. 117 

the particular agents by which health is to be 
preserved or restored. As claims thus de- 
pendent are obviously intangible, and too 
remote from the precincts of reason to allow 
its investigation, or even to be amenable to its 
decisions, its greater discretion will, evidently, 
be manifested in declining the discussion, and 
leave the merits of the system to be determined 
by the powers alluded to. 

Lest these various attractive names, mot- 
toes and mysticisms, should fail in procuring 
the desired attention for these hopeful pro- 
geny of quackery, we observe, not unfrequently, 
the startling caption appended to their an- 
nouncements, "Beware of counterfeits !" de- 
signed, as all must perceive, to give importance 
to the wonderful bantling. This, so far as 
successful in beguiling the credulous, is indeed 
to be deplored. But when viewed in the light 
of the simple fact, is sufficiently ludicrous, as 
presenting the interesting spectacle, (hopeful 
indeed for the honest,) of an attempt of a 
knave to circumvent a knave in the division 
of the spoils of deception, and of an appeal to 
the anticipated victim to protect the base im+ 
position. 

But it is unnecessary to extend the cata- 
logue, or further to weary the attention of the 
intelligent, by a notice of the contemptible arts 
practised by this class of impostors, with 

11 



118 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

a design to delude the ignorant, and those of 
easy faith. The grossest ignorance, or knave- 
ry, is the only category in which the entire 
species can claim rank. And it is to be re- 
gretted, that the public have not long since uni- 
ted to deprive quackery of the ability of prey- 
ing upon their interests, by instituting a ra- 
tional investigation of the frauds by which 
such impositions have been sustained. If a 
few of the thousands of nostrums palmed upon 
the public are, in some instances efficacious 
as simple laxatives or deobstruents, the merits 
of all are to be estimated from their degree of 
inertness ; a character of which their inventors 
are specially mindful, from motives of economy 
as to the expense of the material used, if not 
of regard for the welfare of their deluded pa- 
tients. They are all to be ranked among the 
arts devised to abstract money from the suf- 
ferers from disease, without the expected equiv- 
alent of amended health. Some of a more 
active character are destructive of health, and 
not unfrequently of life. Others, as remarked, 
may be attended with benefit, when they hap- 
pen to be applied to diseases to which they 
are adapted. But the principal benefit derived 
from all, when such is the result, is more from 
the mental influence of faith and hope, im- 
parted by the unreserved assurance of their 
inventors, and the studied mystery or secrecy 



EMPIRICISM AND QUACKERY. 119 

with which they are invested, rather than from 
the inherent qualities of their respective com- 
binations. That faith and hope render es- 
sential aid to medication in diseases generally, 
by the healthful stimulus which they impart, is 
not to be questioned ; and no judicious phy- 
sician will fail to secure their assistance, to a 
degree sanctioned by his scientific knowledge 
of the results of disease, and his professional 
candor. But the empiric, possessing neither 
of these essential qualities, but with a cormo- 
rant's eye, directed alone to his individual in- 
terest, appeals to credulity and the instinctive 
love of life, to further its attainment. And while 
he aims to excite expectations in all cases, 
however desperate their natural character, with 
the view to attain this engrossing object, he is 
reckless of the sad realities which he is accu- 
mulating to burst upon his victim and friends ; 
which are made poignant to a degree propor- 
tionate to the elevation of hope, inspired by 
his ignorance and knavery. 

It is a fact, difficult of explanation, that 
individuals who in all cases exercise a sa- 
gacity and caution in their selection of 
skillful artisans for the structure or repair of 
their most ordinary mechanisms for domestic 
use, should make an exception to their cus- 
tomary rule when the vital fabric on which 
their health and life are dependent, is con- 
cerned. In this case, it is most surprising 



]20 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

that those should be discarded who possess a 
scientific knowledge of its structure and econ- 
omy; and that confidence should be reposed 
in pretenders who are not only wanting, to 
a lamentable degree, in moral and mental en- 
dowments, but are totally devoid of a know- 
ledge of the intricate mechanism from which 
they profess to remove embarrassment. It 
is probable, however, that a solution of the 
problem may be derived from the fact, that 
many persons contemplate the organic vital 
economy by the rules of judgment which they 
apply to ordinary mechanisms. Instead of 
viewing it as a whole, whose powers and ca- 
pabilities are dependent upon an assemblage 
of its various parts, which differ from these 
only in its amazing complexity, they rather 
consider it as a species of mysterious unity, a 
knowledge of which is beyond the reach of 
the human intellect, and therefore is incapa- 
ble of receiving aid from its exercise. 

It is, doubtless, rather conceived by such, 
that its character can alone be developed by 
some unaccountable process, which, in its 
origin and nature, has little affinity to, or de- 
pendence on, ordinary mental perception ; 
but which, notwithstanding, is adapted to 
develop the mystery of the vital mechanism, 
and the character of its derangements. With 
those who arrive at conclusions so irrational, 



EMPIRICISM AND QUACKERY. 121 

relative to the animal economy, it is not sur- 
prising that notions the most absurd should 
exist, regarding the agents by which its dis- 
ordered condition is to be effectually counter- 
acted, or even its healthy actions sustained. 

If those who entertain such vague and un- 
defined notions of the animal economy, would 
but exercise that degree of reason which they 
apply in their judgments of the nature and 
properties of ordinary mechanism, and avail 
themselves of means within the power of all 
for a due estimate of its character, they would 
learn that its results, like most of these, pro- 
ceed from a complicated assemblage of in- 
ternal organs, holding marked relations, each 
being essential to the specific identity of the 
general systematic action, and all being alike 
dependent for healthy operation upon the 
law, in accordance with which its struc- 
ture was modeled. They would likewise 
learn that this, in consequence of superi- 
ority of mechanism, is infinitely more subject 
to dangerous embarrassments from the hands 
of those ignorant of its structure, than is the 
most complicated artificial machinery from 
the interference of those ignorant of its several 
parts, and the laws and principles upon which 
its actions are made dependent. In short, they 
would, without hesitation, repudiate the pre- 
11* 



122 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

tender to marvel-working upon the disordered 
animal fabric, when such person was unable to 
exhibit satisfactory evidence that he was ver- 
sed in the science of its structure. 



SECTION VII. 

Homoeopathy. 
" Credo quia impossibile."* 

Most of the antagonist influences which 
the science of medicine has encountered in 
its progress, consist in the petty and con- 
temptible devices of the ignorant quack and 
nostrum-monger. These generally consist of 
but one, or at most a few pretended specifics, 
which are announced as applicable to all dis- 
eases, however diverse may be their character, 
or the degree of activity which they exhibit. 

The authors of these inventions, (to pro- 
mote their selfish and ambitious designs, hold- 
ing no pretensions to science, and generally 
wanting the requisite genius or industry to 
construct complicated systems,) confidently 
trust their success upon experiments for the 
diversion of popular reason, and their alluring 
appeals to the existing passion for novelty 
and mystery ; an agency which their instinc- 
tive sagacity gives assurance is paramount to 



* " I believe it, for the reason that it is impossible.' ' — 
Ancient satirical paradox. 



124 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

all others for the accomplishment of their un- 
hallowed object. 

Occasionally, however, opposing systems, 
the inventions of authors more talented, and 
of loftier ambition, have originated from the 
labratory of empiricism, such as the atomic 
theory of Epicurus, the chemical theory of 
Paracelsus,* that embracing the astral influ- 



* Paracelsus, who may be considered the father of 
the chemical theory, flourished at the commencement 
of the sixteenth century, when the science of chemistry 
was in its infancy, and when its almost magical phe- 
nomena excited the most extravagant hopes in its re- 
sults. He possessed undoubted superiority of talent, 
and, considering the period in which he lived, was emi- 
nent for his scientific attainments. Like Hahnemann, 
he announced himself to the world as a medical re- 
former, with a boldness, assurance, and self-compla- 
cency, which render him a worthy prototype of the 
modern adventurer for the same distinction. Were a 
modern biographer of the pretended reformers of sci- 
ence, morals, and religion, to adopt the mode of Plu- 
tarch, by instituting a comparison between his several 
subjects, this distinguished empiric is the one, of all oth- 
ers, in whom he might find a striking parallel to the au- 
thor of homoeopathy ; as, in self-conceit, boldness, vision- 
ary theorizing, and affected contempt of authority and 
experience, it would be difficult to discover a " par no- 
bile fratrum" possessing a greater assimilation of char- 
acter and mental qualities. 

Paracelsus promulgated the theory, that all changes 
of organic structure, constituting disease, as well as 
those inducing senility, were the effects of a deranging 
preponderance, of either the acid or alkaline constitu- 



HOMCEOPATHY. 125 

ences, termed astrology, &c., each of which, 
for a period, became a formidable rival to medi- 



ents of the organs ; and in both cases, were susceptible 
of counteraction, by appropriate neutralizing antago- 
nists, or by additional supplies to the deficient element. 
His doctrines, therefore, will be perceived as wholly 
based on chemistry ; and so infatuated did he become 
in their advocacy, that he proclaimed an era, as not 
only having dawned, but had actually become resplen- 
dent, through the light of his genius, when assaults upon 
the citadel of life, whether by disease or age, were ren- 
dered imbecile when defended by his chemical ypo- 
tences. 

He proclaimed all antecedent medical science and 
experience but a tissue of errors, in which the human 
mind had ever groped, until dissipated by his wonder- 
ful discoveries. Such was his dogmatic zeal, that he 
caused a collection of the writings of Hippocrates, Cel- 
sus, Galen, and all preceding works on medicine, and 
formally committed them to the flames, before his ad- 
miring class of pupils, while seated in pomp in his pro- 
fessorial chair at the institution of Padua, in which he 
was a lecturer and teacher. 

In arrogant conceit of his own self-importance, in a 
pretended ability for effecting revolutionary results, in 
denunciations of the labors of his predecessors, — indeed, 
in all respects, except that of asserting a claim to the 
power of resisting the encroachments of age, the Ger- 
man is in no degree inferior in pretensions to his Pa- 
duan parallel. The latter compounded an elixir vitae, 
or immortalizing catholicon, which he ever bore about 
his person, to meet the emergency of a vital assault, 
and ever proclaimed his own material immortality, as 
well as that of all others, possessing a faith in its re-in- 
vigorating influence. 

It is not improbable that Paracelsus, living at the 



126 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

cal science. But with the subsidence of their 
novelties, and by the influence of a science 
based upon reason, these visionary fabrica- 
tions, each in succession, yielded its pre-em- 
inence to some other, constructed on a sem- 
blance more nearly representing the existing 
state of the sciences, and more accordant with 
the varied condition of popular taste and sen- 
timent. 



period of the dawn of chemical science, might have en- 
tertained honest expectations, that its agents would ef- 
fect anew era in the science of medicine; and, perhaps, 
accomplish many of the wonders which he announced. 
Whatever may have been the motives by which he was 
actuated however, he now appears in the dilemma of 
having" been a downright knave, or an infatuated mono- 
maniac. Unfortunately for his hopes of a perpetuated 
material existence, he died in a state of intoxication, at 
about the age of forty, with his vitalizing elixir in his 
pocket. He was equally unlucky in securing for him- 
self posthumous fame as a public benefactor, as his 
superior intellect, in connection with his lofty preten- 
sions, served only to stigmatize his memory with the 
derogatory title of prince of quacks. 
There is little doubt that the 

" Longing after immortality," 
or 

<4 The secret dread and inward horror 
Of falling into naught," 

have prompted most of the boasted reformers in medi- 
cine, as well as in morals and religion, to their strenu- 
ous efforts ; although the alternative in prospect may 
alone have been a like unpropitious and infamous re- 
membrance. 



HOMOEOPATHY. 127 

The latest, and the existing theory of this 
description, is that denominated homoeopa- 
thy, the invention of an ultra conceited Ger- 
man, of some talent and some pretensions to 
science, named Hahnemann.* The assumed 
principles of this theory are equally novel with 
those enumerated, and opposed to all observa- 
tion and experience of the lights of medical 
science, for the past three thousand years. 
This system is based on pretensions which, 
(if true,) demolish the conclusions of all pre- 
vious investigators of the agents employed for 
the removal of diseases; and it must be ad- 



* The entire of the writings of this visionary is but 
a tissue of conceitedness, uniformly egotistical, and self- 
laudatory of his own sagacity, as manifested in his won- 
derful discovery. The title of his work called " Orga- 
non," was adopted, no doubt, from a conceit of the in- 
tellectual resemblance of the author with the immortal 
Bacon, whose work, on the inductive method of reason- 
ing, is styled " Novum Organum." 

The following affords but a small specimen from that 
work of his self-laudatory and self-complacent method 
of writing : " I am the first who pursued this path with 
perseverance that could alone result from, and be sup- 
ported by the intimate conviction of this great truth, so 
valuable to the human race, that the homoeopathic 
administration of medicines is the sole method of curing 
disease." — Org anon, page 137. 

" It is impossible that there should be any other true 
method of curing dynamic diseases, besides homceopa- 
thy."— Bid. 



128 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

mitted, that the hitherto universally received 
notions of the proportionate relations which 
the power of causes hold with their effects, in 
mechanical philosophy, require essential modi- 
fication, on the acknowledgement of the 
claims of this strange, not to say preposterous 
theory. 

That such a claim should be preferred, for 
a reversal of belief in established opinions and 
principles, may well excite derision, when it 
is understood that its validity consists, not 
in the tested developments of time and ex- 
tended observation of facts, accumulated by a 
mass of talent and intelligence, but mostly on 
the closet lucubrations of the inventor, Hahne- 
mann, tested by the assumed experience of his 
disciples, who, in aggregate of talent, are far 
from holding a rank equal with the medium 
standard of medical reputation. 

In addressing the intelligent, it cannot be 
necessary to adduce evidence to prove, that 
every branch of science has attained its pre- 
sent comparative state of perfection, through 
the associated labors of intellect in all pre- 
ceding ages : nor that medicine, one of the 
most complicated of the sciences, involving 
all the abstruse problems of the animal econo- 
my, instead of being an exception, presents a 
field requiring a greater succession of intel- 
lectual effort for its successful cultivation, 



HOMOEOPATHY. 129 

than any other branch of learning. If, there- 
fore, it has failed to acquire the exactness to 
which other sciences have attained, it is to be 
imputed to the yet insufficient period which 
has elapsed since its origin, adequately to de- 
fine the complicated principles upon which 
it is based, rather than to the want of talent 
and assiduity with which it has been culti- 
vated. 

No individual, versed in the science of hu- 
man nature, would for a moment give heed to 
pretensions, that the existing degree of civil- 
ization, which has resulted from a progessive 
process through ages, could be developed in 
barbarous communities within the short period 
of a few months, or even years, by the teach- 
ings of one or a few individuals. Nor would 
such admit, that the wonderful inventions in 
the arts, as the steam engine, &c, instead of 
resulting from a happy application of princi- 
ples which were the product of the combined 
intellect of various ages, were the sole and in- 
dependent offspring of the individual genius 
of their authors. Yet such conclusions, in 
regard to civilization and the arts, would be 
no more irrational, than the belief that a sys- 
tem, like that of medicine, could originate and 
be perfected by the labors of an individual, 
however great his genius, which should be 
more perfect, and more worthy of confidence, 

12 



130 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

than that based upon the experience and in- 
tellectual contributions of men the most dis- 
tinguished for talent, and deeply skilled in the 
science of the animal economy, during the 
period of more than thirty centuries. 

Such, it will be understood, are the claims 
of homoeopathy, which is known to be found- 
ed solely on the speculations of its inventor 
and a few recent followers, who, as has been 
noticed, generally hold a minor rank in the 
profession to which they claim to belong. 

The above view of facts, in connection with 
the important consideration, that the principles 
upon which medical science is founded, have 
not only been sustained, but essentially 
strengthened by the sanction of men of the 
highest standing for literary acquirements and 
talent in every era of its history, and hav- 
ing at the present period obtained the assent 
of nearly all its enlightened and unbiased pro- 
fessors in every country, warrant the highly 
important suggestion to all who are not inti- 
mately versed in the science of the animal 
economy, (previous to yielding their faith to 
such novel pretensions as that of homoeopa- 
thy,) to institute a scientific examination of 
the time-tested system, which it aims to sup- 
plant ; and this, with the view of estimating 
the merits of both, from a rational compari- 
son of their respective claims. 



HOMdOPATHY. 131 

It is presumed, that honest convictions in- 
fluence the non-professional converts to the 
doctrines of homoeopathy, to repose confi- 
dence and life upon that most inefficient of 
all empirical systems that has ever yet pre- 
tended to contribute to a restoration of 
health, from a state of disease. But, if a 
like charitable vindication is extended to its 
professional advocates, who profess an ac- 
quaintance with medical science, it must alone 
consist in that unenviable mantle, the " one 
idea" which is frequently adduced to protect 
the social and religious fanatic from the 
charge of selfish ambition and direct impos- 
ture. 

It is not here designed minutely to discuss 
the claims which the established science of 
medicine, and homoeopathy, respectively prof- 
fer for public consideration. But that the 
candid searcher after truth may be supplied 
with data on which to base his conclusions, 
allusion will briefly be made to some of the 
prominent facts and principles which charac- 
terize each, that, by a comparative view, the 
judgment may more readily decide on their 
respective merits 

The most extended experience of all the 
most distinguished cultivators of medical sci- 
ence, has proved that the effects of medicinal 



132 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

substances on the human system hold a 
relation to the quantity applied ; and that 
such effects are modified, in various degrees, 
proportionate to such quantities, from their 
action as a destructive poison, to their termi- 
nation in almost infinitely minute effects ; or 
their entire inefficiency, from minuteness of 
quantity, to act upon the vital organism. 

Medicines, when applied to the structure of 
the economy, form no exception to the physi- 
cal law, that active forces, or causes, are re- 
quired to bear a relation to the amount of 
force to be acted upon ; or, in short, the cause 
is required to be adapted to the effect expected 
to be produced. Thus, if in the human sys- 
tem diseased action exists, the counteracting 
effects of the medicine given for its removal, 
is required to be of sufficient force to over- 
come, or control it ; and the quantity admin- 
istered is to be graduated in relation to the 
force of the diseased action. Or if the entire 
vital action is designed to be suppressed, large- 
ly increased quantities of the same, constitu- 
ting a medicinal poison, is required for its ac- 
complishment. 

Every tyro in natural philosophy possesses 
the knowledge, that quantities of the explo- 
sives, such as gunpowder, which would be 
adequate, when placed in suitable situations, 
to demolish the largest buildings, or to disinte- 



HOMOEOPATHY. 133 

grate the largest rocks, may, by extreme di- 
vision, have its power so modified, as to mani- 
fest effects scarcely appreciable upon masses 
ot far less magnitude than those instanced. 

Indeed, it may be assumed as an incontro- 
vertible position, that all material agents, 
whether organized or inorganic, when re- 
quired to act upon other matter, will fail in 
their desired operation, unless, by their mole- 
cular combination, a power is generated pro- 
portionate to the effects sought to be pro- 
duced ; or, in other words, to the bulk of mat- 
ter to be affected by its force. Thus the life 
of the infant is destroyed by a quantity of 
opium, or other poisons, which the adult 
might take with impunity. When given for 
remedial purposes, all medicines produce re- 
sults in a ratio corresponding with the quan- 
tities given and the age of the recipient, sub- 
ject however to the occasional exception of 
modification by peculiar idiosyncrasy. Com- 
bination of kernels of gunpowder will impel 
the cannon ball through the hull of the dis- 
tant ship, while the individual grain is incapa- 
ble of commencing its action. And in no in- 
stance whatever, except in the brain of the 
arrant visionary, can a different perception of 
the laws to which matter is subjected, be en- 
tertained or countenanced. 
12* 



134 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

Now, in application of the foregoing reason- 
ing to medical science, it may be stated, that 
the most lengthened experience has deter- 
mined, that diseases are agencies acting in 
contravention to healthy systematic action, 
and generally, if uncontroled by remedies, or 
the sanatary efforts of the economy, termin- 
ate in the dissolution, or serious detriment 
of the fabric invaded. The same length- 
ened experience has determined, that certain 
medicinal agents, administered in quantities 
suitable for the existing emergency, possess 
the ability, often to overcome such deranged 
action, and to effect a return to a state of 
health, by the counteraction and expulsion of 
the causes by which it has been interrupted. 

For the purpose of rendering aid to com- 
mon-sense conclusions, at which it is impor- 
tant that all, whether professional or non-pro- 
fessional, should arrive on this subject, a few 
facts will briefly be adduced, which are deem- 
ed incontrovertible, as they have been estab- 
lished by the general assent of all rational 
physicians in every age and country. 

A large proportion of diseases have ever 
been acknowledged as originating from de- 
rangement of the organs of digestion,* in 



* The secondary cause of most diseases is derived 
by Hahnemann, from itch or siphilis, which has been 



HOMOEOPATHY, 135 

consequence of the irritation of their imme- 
diate contents. In such cases their removal 
is desirable, and is often speedily effected by 
emetics, of which tartarized antimony is one 
of the most important This, given in doses 
of from three to six grains, or in less quanti- 
ties, in combination with other emetic sub- 
stances, in proper proportions of each, (as 
is usually practised,) often speedily removes 
the irritating contents of the stomach, and 
with them the general diseased action. The 
same medicine, when exhibited in much di- 
minished doses, as from the one eighth to the 
sixteenth or twentieth of a grain, varied of 



repelled into the system, by allceopathic treatment ; the 
primary cause of these diseases being mental. How- 
ever skeptical may be allceopathic physicians, as to his 
reasonings regarding the mental origin of the former 
disease, doubtless all will yield their assent as regards 
the latter. With such view of diseases, it is not sur- 
prising that sulphur and mercury in " potences" (Hah- 
nemann) of a millionth, or trillionth of a grain, should 
rank among his most favorite remedies. It must be 
presumed that Hahnemann's reasonings regarding his 
theory of the mental origin of diseases, have been satis- 
factory and convincing to all his followers ; as, otherwise, 
it would be evincing a want of respect to their intellects 
to suppose, that they could bestow a faith upon his 
molecular or atomic doses ; which, like mathematical 
points, are rather objects of mental conception, than an 
existence susceptible of demonstration by any evidence 
derived from impressions made on the senses. 



13G CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

course by age and peculiarity of constitution, 
without producing emetic action, has been de- 
termined, by the same general experience, to 
be one of the most valuable remedies in fe- 
brile diseases, by its action on the skin and 
lungs, producing perspiration and expectora- 
tion, effects most salutary in this class of af- 
fections. If the quantity given is so gradu- 
ated as to produce slight nausea, without 
emetic effects, its efficacy, in general, is more 
manifest. Given in quantities much dimin- 
ished from those mentioned, its effects are in- 
appreciable to the senses either of the pa- 
tient or physician. Calomel, in doses of from 
five to fifteen grains, is a valuable cathartic ; 
and when the quantity is diminished to one 
half, or one fourth of one grain, is an alterative 
or deobstruent. But in quantities much less- 
ened, these effects disappear, and the system 
manifests no recognizance of its presence 
within it. Many of the spasmodic affections 
yield to large exhibitions of opium, as from 
two to several grains, while the ordinary dose 
of one grain rarely is capable of controling 
them. In ordinary instances, one grain will 
generally produce quiescence, or sleep, in 
adults ; but essentially diminished from this 
quantity, its sensible effects will be slight, or 
in no degree noticeable. It is unnecessary 
further to particularize substances employed 



HOMOEOPATHY. 137 

as remedies, but it may be generally stated, 
that all remedial agents act upon the sys- 
tem with like proportionate effects to the 
quantities administered. If essential devia- 
tions from the effects stated, occasionally oc- 
cur in individual instances, such are but rare 
deviations from a general law, and but prove 
the exceptions which may arise from individual 
idiosyncrasies, repulsive of the action of par- 
ticular remedial agents. 

In this connection will be noticed the preten- 
sions of the homoeopathic theory, which assigns 
to all diseases a primary origin in the mind, and 
which is assumed as proved and substantiated 
by the speculations and experience of Hahne- 
mann, and a limited number of his disciples.* 



* It has been stated, in a previous note, that the 
chemical theory of Paracelsus was based upon the as- 
sumption, that the causes of diseased action consisted in 
the predominance of an acid or an alkali ; and that to 
effect their removal, simple neutralizing re-agents were 
required. The theory of Hahnemann rests on the posi- 
tion, announced with equal dogmatic assurance, that all 
diseases are of primary mental origin ; consequently, 
reasoning a priori upon such imputed cause, with the 
object of investigating curative agencies for disease thus 
generated, must inevitably have led the distinguished 
discoverer to his celebrated maxim, similia similibus 
curantur ; or, literally, that remedies, to prove efficacious 
on a cause thus subtle, must possess a similar refined 
character to that of the agency to be effected. This 



138 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

It is designed, by this method, to facilitate ra- 
tional conclusions, by means of a ready com- 



mode of reasoning must necessarily have taught him 
that such cause (in the lucid language of the author of Or- 
ganon) " cannot otherwise be assailed and effected than 
in a (denamic) spiritual manner ; neither can such mor- 
bid disturbances, or, in other words, such diseases, be 
removed by the physician, except, in like manner, by 
means of the spiritual (dinamic visual) countervailing 
agency of suitable medicines, acting on the same vital 
principle." — Org anon, page 85. 

Many metaphysicians have reasoned that the mind is 
a sort of monad, possessing neither parts nor extension ; 
a kind of mathematical point, existing without actual 
existence ; in fact, an entity, intangible, unextensible, 
undefinable, yet acting, active, effective, and susceptible 
of being affected. On the presumption that the author 
of homoeopathy belonged to this class of psychological 
sages, the beauty and magnitude of his discovery, 
that " like cures like/* must be apparent. For the mind 
wants the power of conceiving of an agency more subtle, 
and of a character more accordant with, and like its own 
nature, as above denned, than that exhibited in a ho- 
moeopathic decillionth or sextillionth part of an ordinary 
alleoeopathic dose of chemically concentrated, or other 
drugs. In view of such magnitude of minuteness, it is 
not surprising that Hahnemann's exponent, the ima- 
ginative Jocelin, should, in rapturous admiration of the 
wisdom of his German master, have written that " one 
man, by Hahnemann's process, can, in a single day, 
effect a greater comminution of a substance than could 
have been effected in a direct mixture by the combined 
labor of the whole human race, continually operating 
since the creation of Adam. The labor that built the 
pyramids is nothing in comparison to that of even the 
eighteenth potence by such a process ; that is, by thorough- 
ly triturating one grain with a sextillionth of a grain !" 



HOMCEOPATHY. 139 

parison of this theory with the principles and 
laws hitherto announced as predominant in 
all departments of nature, whether vital or 
inorganic, and which, as stated, have been 
confirmed by rational investigation in all 
periods in which science has been cultiva- 
ted. 

Instead of deductions, heretofore recognized, 
regarding the efficient quantities and definite 
operation of remedial agents, the homoeopath 
has substituted the theory, that the " infinites- 
imal" diminution of the ordinary quantities, 
exerts a power antagonistic to disease, which, 
far more surely, interrupts disordered action, 
and more speedily restores organism to its nat- 
ural healthy condition. 

Thus, in the case of the tartarized antimony, 
instanced above, in lieu of its least diaphoretic, 
or perspirative dose, which the most extended 
experience has decided suitable and adequate 
for such effects, the dilution and exhibition of 
such quantity (viz., the l-8th or l-20th grain) 
in millionth or even trillionth parts, is announ- 
ced by homoeopathy, as possessing a potency 
in controling diseased action, which advances 
in a ratio proportionate to the diminution of 
the quantity administered, or at least in degrees 
presenting similar relations. Opium, which 
has been noticed as requiring exhibition in 
largely increased doses in some spasmodic 



140 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

diseases to reduce their action, by the ho- 
moeopathic theory, undergoes equal division 
and attenuation with antimony, in which state 
its powers are claimed as appearing in their 
greatest development. 

As a particularity of detail would be but a 
repetition of the same principle of exhibition, 
applied to the various remedies employed in 
homoeopathic prescription, it is deemed suffi- 
cient to state, that quinine, ipecacuanha, aco- 
nite, cicuta, and indeed their entire catalogue 
of medicines, are administered in the same 
form of infinitesimal reduction of doses, as 
those of antimony, calomel, and opium.* 

In considering the preceding illustrations, 
derived from the physical laws, the Homoe- 
opath will most probably object, that such are 
not applicable to the animal economy ; as this 
is subject to the influence of a vital force, 



* A globule of sugar, impregnated with the juice 
of aconite, of the decillionth degree of dilution, cures the 
most violent pleuritic fever in twenty-four hours at fur- 
therest. — Organon, page 16, note. 

It is taught by Hahnemann, " that the homoeopathic 
medicinal agent, selected by a skillful physician, will 
convert it (the disease,) into another medicinal disease, 
which is analogous, but rather more intense," " and this 
in turn is easily subdued by the vital powers, leaving, 
in its primitive state of integrity and health, the essence 
or substance which animates and preserves the body." — 
See Organon, page 90. 



HOMCEOPATHY. 141 

which furnishes the law of its action. In re- 
ply to such objection, it may be stated, that it 
is not a fact that vitality is a power inde- 
pendent of the laws governing ordinary mat- 
ter ; it only holds an agency in the econ- 
omy, which, during its existence, so modifies 
its action as to render aid in effecting the 
specific changes which characterize the pecu- 
liar combinations of matter, constituting a liv- 
ing fabric, in contradistinction to its ordinary 
aggregation. 

Thus gravity is not in any degree suspended 
in its action on the general vitalized com- 
pound. The heart circulates the blood on 
principles strictly mechanical, deriving from 
vitality only its structural abilities, and a stim- 
ulus inciting its contractile and impulsive ca- 
pabilities. It requires for its exertion of nor- 
mal healthy action, an amount of stimulus 
equal to that supplied by the entire volume of 
the blood ; and as in many diseases this stim- 
ulus is defective, it is reasonable to presume 
that the artificial supply must be supplied from 
sources more abounding in power than the 
the atomic " potences" of homoeopathy. 

The stomach, liver, &c, furnish fluids 
charged with suitable chemical agents, to ef- 
fect digestion of the food, and its preparation 
for systemic nutriment. Indeed, the functions 
generally are made dependent upon the ordin- 
13 



142 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

ary laws of matter, subject to a degree of mod- 
ification by the vital influence. 

The invisible and hidden function of organic 
nutrition, there is every reason to suppose, is 
effected through the medium of the chemical 
agents contained in the blood, causing deposi- 
tion of new material in parts requiring such, 
and a simultaneous detachment of the effete 
and deleterious debris of the organs ; and by 
the same active affinities, aided by an en- 
dosmosis, (a kind of capillary attraction,) their 
expulsion from the system is accomplished. 
Disease, which in most cases is a disordered 
state of nutrition, consists of, or is doubtless 
attended with, an increase or diminution of the 
chemical stimuli which ordinarily abound in 
the blood. 

Chemistry conclusively shows, that the ani- 
mal fabric is composed of a variety of ele- 
mentary constituents, many of which, as car- 
bon, soda, potass, lime, sulphur, phosphorus, 
iron, &c, furnish homoeopathy with its most 
efficient remedies. It is probable that the 
quantities of these various elements of the 
system, existing in the fluids and solids of 
every adult, which substances, as medicines, 
are exhibited by the homoeopath in infinites- 
imal doses, as his most active remedies, would 
furnish to any honest prescriber, on the strict 
principles of Hahnemann, more than would 



HOMCEOPATHY. 143 

suffice for active prescription, the entire period 
of the longest professional life, if not of sev- 
eral lives. 

An illustration still more demonstrative of 
homoeopathic irrationality, may be derived 
from the phenomena of diseases manifested 
during their progress, and often at the period 
of their origin. Facts of the most obvious 
character show, that in many formidable di- 
seases, the healthy balance of the elements 
composing the organic fabric becomes deran- 
ged, presenting a deficiency or preponderancy 
of some of these, furnishing often the most 
prominent agency of derangement. Thus, in 
calcular affections, the natural acids, or alkalies, 
acquire such ascendency as to exhibit the most 
marked features of the disease. In rickets, a 
deficiency of limy compounds is proved by 
the defective supply of that substance for the 
solidification of the bones. Scurvy presents 
a putrescent and alkaline condition of the 
fluids and solids of the system, requiring, with 
improved diet and tonics, a large supply of 
acids to correct this altered condition of the 
healthy organic compounds. 

These diseases, as well as gout, rheuma- 
tism, and some others, exhibit indubitable evi- 
dence that great derangement in the equilib- 
rium of the constituent elements of the sys- 
tem often exists ; and whether this constitutes 



144 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

a primary or secondary agent of disease, it 
certainly affords an indication of chief im- 
portance in their treatment, that remedies, in 
adaptation of quantities as well as kinds, should 
be applied with the view to restore the ele- 
mentary inequality. 

In such condition of disease, a rational se- 
lection of remedies would be such as had re- 
ference to a restoration of the healthy equili- 
brium that had been interrupted, by furnishing 
such substances, as remedies, which were of a 
nature to supply the deficient, or to neutralize 
the preponderating element, and thereby aid 
in a restoration of the normal healthy standard. 
But, by homoeopathic theorizing, such obvious 
state of disease is to be combatted, not by the 
exhibition of acids, alkalies, tonics, &c, in the 
rational quantity of a compensating supply of 
the deficient elements, as neutralizing agents of 
those superabounding, but rather by a charm in 
the name of "millionth" or " decillionth dilu- 
tions'' of such remedies, by which the elementa- 
ry discords are to be removed, and the unnatural 
strife hushed to an immediate healthy repose. 
But it is not only preposterous, but the extreme 
of folly, seriously to pretend that the deranged 
relations of these abounding systemic ele- 
ments can be restored to their healthy propor- 
tions by the baseless nothings which is the 
literal interpretation of all homoeopathic pre- 
scription. 



HOMOEOPATHY. 145 

Chemical analysis shows conclusively, that 
many substances employed as nutrients con- 
tain some of the most active medicinal poisons, 
which the homoeopath affects to administer 
but in doses of a millionth or decillionth dilu- 
tion of an ordinary alloeopathic quantity, but 
which are often taken daily, as food or condi- 
ments, in great comparative concentration. Of 
these are, prussic acid, in the peach, almond, 
&c. ; opium, oxalic acid, &c, in lettuce, sorrel, 
and a variety of sallads. 

Even the atmosphere which we inspire, ever 
contains carbonic acid, an active compound of 
carbon, estimated at from one hundredth to 
one thousandth parts of its volume. Occa- 
sionally many other of the most energetic sub- 
stances are diffused in the air in a gaseous 
form, and in frequent instances are moment- 
arily introduced within the system in consider- 
able quantities. Indeed, were all the active 
substances thus daily taken into the economy 
by the invisible natural processes, but pre- 
scribed by the alleoeopathic physician, in view 
of the Hahnemannic lights, there is little ques- 
tion that (from a prescient view of the disas- 
trous result) a homicide, "secundum artem" 
would not fail to be announced.* 

# In view of such manifest dangers, which a necessary 
science unfolds to him, the intelligent homoeopath is 

13* 



146 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

This recent novelty founds its claims, not on 
the pretended discovery of new physiological 
principles, or new remedial agents for the cure 
of disease, but on the employment of such as 
have long been known and thoroughly investi- 
gated by physicians. It is true that Hahne- 
mann, its originator, has announced the novel 
theory, that all diseases owe their primary origin 
to the mind ; and he is entitled to the credit of 
the discovery, that a knowledge of the anatom- 



certainly an object requiring the commisseration of all 
the humane ; since Providence has immersed him in 
perils, (which his science can but unfold,) by imposing 
upon him necessities, both in his structure and position, 
the indulgence of which is perpetually saturating his 
system with formidable poisons in allceopathic quantities. 
In such condition, with the knowledge that the effects 
of a single dose of a millionth or a trillionth portion of 
a grain, (as taught by Hahnemann,) continues its effects 
during a period of from four to six days, either for safety 
or danger, the exceeding frail tenor on which he holds 
existence must ever be fearfully before him, and even 
its hourly continuance must appear a perpetual mar- 
vel and demonstrative miracle. In addition, it may be 
presumed that his humane sympathies for the brute 
creation would be hopelessly annoying to his mental 
quiet, as he ought to view them as furnished with pro- 
visionary instincts, directing them, when diseased, to 
appropriate remedies, which they are compelled to re- 
ceive alloeopathically, for the want of the means of 
homoeopathic manipulation ; as nature has furnished no 
remedies of sufficient dilution in which their highest 
curative " potcnces" can be attained. 



HOMOEOPATHY. 147 

ical structure of the system is without utility to 
the physician ; as he teaches that a perception 
of the locality of disease, or of the particular 
organ affected, renders no aid, nor is this to be 
taken into consideration in the applications for 
its cure. Divested of such absurd notions, and 
the most wild and visionary theorizing on the 
nature of disease, announced in a train of 
equally absurd reasoning and a new verbal 
coinage, probably as little comprehended by 
the writer as his readers, the tangible novelty 
of homoeopathy consists in the simple but 
strange announcement, that remedial agents 
are salutary and efficacious for the cure of 
disease, only, when exhibited in quantities so 
infinitely minute, that no reflective or rational 
mind, versed in the character of the animal 
economy, or the agency of causes by which it 
is affected, can for a moment admit their effi- 
cacy, either upon the system of the patient or 
his disease, in the least degree, except what 
may be derived through the credulous faith of 
those inviting its exhibition. In fact, no such 
investigation can result in any other conclu- 
sion, than that homoeopathic prescription acts 
merely as a mental anodyne during the period 
that the conservative powers with which the 
organic economy is endowed, by their unaided 
efforts, either expel the morbid agents, thereby 
restoring healthy action to the organs, or, if 



148 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

less successful in their attempts, yield them to 
their destructive* influence. 

Such is the remedial power with which or- 
ganization is endowed, that, by its unaided 
efforts, morbid agencies are often successfully 
counteracted, and many grave diseases re- 
moved, not unfrequently when its power is 
embarrassed by the noxious administration of 
the quack, or the injudicious employment of 
his nostrums. It is, therefore, little surprising 
that the Homoeopathic pretender, aided in his 
assumptions by this conservator of the econ- 
omy, should not want his purloined occasions 
to boast of recoveries from disease subsequent 
to his prescriptions ; notwithstanding similar 
claims might, with far greater justice, be pre- 
ferred by every matronly village dispenser of 
mullen, catnip, and her various anti-drug for- 
mulas ; or, by the prescriber of relics and 
charms to the nervously affected invalid, re- 
quiring such appropriate mental stimulus as a 
credulous faith is often capable of imparting. 

The above remarks are, beyond question, 
true as regards prescription in accordance with 
the ostensible tenets of Homoeopathy. But it 
is highly probable that most of its professional 
advocates have embraced its doctrines, with 
the view to make its novelties available to se- 
cure public patronage, and thereby enhance 
their interests, rather than from the convic- 



H03ICE0PATHY. 149 

tion of the real value of the claims which it 
proffers. 

From such presumption may be derived a 
hope, that the sum of evil accruing to society 
from the omissions of Homoeopathy to supply 
efficacious treatment to imminent disease may, 
in a considerable degree, be diminished in the 
apparent amount, which an ordinary estimate 
of the judgment would be likely to give. A 
courteous charity must suggest that such ac- 
commodating professors, when prescribing for 
grave diseases requiring energetic prescription, 
would make such judicious appropriation of 
the resources of the two opposite systems as 
the emergency might require, although their 
consistency, as well as expediency, should dictate 
that alloeopathic quantities be denominated 
Homoeopathic, when exhibited before confi- 
ding spectators of their acts. 

AH empirical nostrums and systems, that 
have ever been announced, have had the ac- 
companiment of an assumed evidence of their 
superiority over the established system, which 
it was the aim of their projectors to supercede. 
Indeed, the sagacity of the inventors would be 
justly impeached, were their systems presented 
to a common sense public, without such indis- 
pensible requisite for the attainment of their pre- 
meditated designs. As the ambition for popular 
eclat, however transient or unmerited, and an 



150 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

engrossing self-interest, are the impelling mo- 
tives which influence the empirical pretender to 
construct his inventions, a common estimate of 
his intellect would naturally excite the expecta- 
tion, that his fabric would be woven in conform- 
ity with that propensity of the mind, hertofore 
alluded to, upon which he must be presumed to 
be aware his success alone depends ; and that it 
should be fortified by an ostensible armature of 
assumed facts, sufficient to subdue the natural 
skepticism of the mind, and delude to a surren- 
der of its belief in the novelty presented. 

In such adaptations of its texture, and the 
necessary display of assumptions and pretended 
facts requisite to ensure a temporary success, 
the Hahnemanic theory is not defective, or un- 
worthy of a comparison with its defunct pre- 
decessors. Nor will it appear that its author 
is undeserving a reputation for sagacity, and an 
intimate knowledge of ordinary human nature. 
For, while he has indulged a propensity for 
the novel and the marvelous, he has entrenched 
himself within a cloud of subtleties and mysti- 
cisms, more profoundly obscured by his reason- 
ings and new-coined technicality. Whether 
true, therefore, or false, it may perhaps ever 
remain a perplexing paradox to ordinary rea- 
son and the senses, for the cause, that the ob- 
jects and facts pretended to be embraced are 
too intangible, and too far beyond their pre- 



HOMOEOPATHY. 151 

cincts, to be made the subjects of their inves- 
tigation. 

Such is the texture and adaptations of the 
Homoeopathic novelty, which evidently has 
been moulded in a conformity with the cre- 
dulity of the existing period of advancement in 
the sciences. A period when such gross sys- 
tems as astrology and its kindred species, 
which were adapted to the false sciences of the 
middle ages, could in no degree be counte- 
nanced, even by the most ignorant. Yet, 
singular as it may appear, this theory is not 
wanting presumed disinterested advocates, pos- 
sessing intelligence and science, who have 
been captivated by its plausible novelties, so 
far as to yield it their support. This phe- 
nomenon must be explained on the supposition 
that these, by over-rigid speculations on the 
acknowledged imperfections of reason, have 
adjudged its entire fallibility ; and are there- 
fore ready to embrace, as a substitution, the 
figments of its rival, imagination. Or that, 
from a knowledge of the imperfections of le- 
gitimate medical science, they are inclined to 
discard the entire system for the embrace of 
such novelties as may be rendered specious by 
a given number of assumed facts, although 
these, they may be compelled to receive, mainly, 
on the authority of their promulgators alone ; 
or perhaps, in some instances, the theory mav 



152 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

have been adopted through the influence of a 
preponderating tendency of the mind to a 
ready faith in the marvelous and obscure, by 
which its decisions have been biased, while 
under excitement from the novelties presented, 
rather than by a dispassionate examination 
which the importance of the subject undoubt- 
edly demands. 

Homoeopathy, however, may not be un- 
worthy of a consideration in estimating de- 
grees of negative merit, when contrasted with 
the over-drugging quack and the mercen- 
ary nostrum-monger. For while the latter, 
through eagerness for gain, often destroys 
health and life by encouraging quantitive 
exhibition of their specifics, the infinitesimal 
doses of the former, though contributing no aid 
to the sanative power of nature, certainly is 
not chargeable w r ith interposing the least de- 
gree of embarrassment to its conservative ope- 
rations. 

From the exposition of the tenets of ho- 
moepathy which has been given it will appear, 
that their reception as legitimate science, not 
only involves the discussion, that the essential 
principles on which all past and existing med- 
ical prescription is founded are erroneous and 
false, but that the rational deduction in nat- 
ural philosophy, that causes hold a corres- 
ponding relation to the effects which they 



HOMOEOPATHY. 153 

originate, is a position alike fallacious and un- 
tenable, which is an assumption too prepos- 
terous to need the attempt to refute. 

It is to be feared, that the easy faith of 
converts to this theory has been biased by 
the probabilities which have been realized by 
the extraordinary inventions in the arts, in 
modern periods, rather than by sober philo- 
sophical investigation of the relations that such 
bear to the principles discovered by preceding 
cultivators of science. It will, however, ap- 
pear manifest to all familiar with the scien- 
tific history of the principles upon which such 
inventions are dependent, that their authors, 
though entitled to distinguished consideration 
for their discoveries, have been able to acquire 
their reputation by so availing themselves of 
the labors of their predecessors, as, by a hap- 
py application and combination of previous 
discoveries, to accomplish the great results 
that emanate from their genius. 

If these individual inventions in the arts 
are generally but completing combinations of 
structures, by their fortunate discoverers, that 
have long been in progress by the efforts of a 
succession of laborers in the field of the phys- 
ical sciences, much less can it be expected that 
a complicated system, like that of medicine, 
based on the vital laws and embracing the en- 
tire range of the natural sciences, should be 
14 



154 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

developed and perfected by any individual, 
however intellectually endowed. But far less 
can it be rationally hoped to be accomplished 
by such adventurous speculatists as have uni- 
versally been the authors of its innovating 
rival theories. 

No one questions but that medical science 
is yet susceptible of the greatest improvements. 
But it is the extreme of folly to entertain 
a notion of the probability, that this time- 
confirmed system is to be demolished by the 
infantile genius of homoeopathy, and that its 
own fabric is destined to be erected on its 
ruins.* 



* Since this section was in press, the author has met 
with an epistolary essay, addressed to the public, which 
is admirably illustrative of the data on which homoeo- 
pathy relies for its success. Of the writer's scientific 
character, moral orthodoxy, or standing with the fra- 
ternity to which he has attached himself, farther than 
his portraiture in his epistle shows, the author is wholly 
ignorant ; but (as is common in similar cases) he an- 
nounces that he has passed the tedious ordeal of allceo- 
pathy. It is to be understood that the former is of course 
proved ; and his conversion to homoeopathy, upon the 
presentation of certain important facts, may he received 
as evidence of his honesty and extreme conscienciousness. 
Throughout the pages of this document, the interesting 
canines appear beautifully protrusive and prominent. 
Skeptics also, (unless hopelessly willful,) may obtain 
light, as in addition to the opportunities afforded in said 
circular, the writer, in furtherance of his object of pro- 
moting true science and the public welfare, has candidly 



HOMOEOPATHY. 155 

If such idea may be entertained, that a 
recent novel invention, like this, with but 



and beneficently given information that his office is at 
the corner of Water and Wall. 

Besides a liberal diffusion of the trite empirical boasts 
of wonder-workings by homoeopathy, the usual amount 
of lugubrious wailings regarding allceopathic persecu- 
tion, (the infallible resort of quackery, with the view to 
invoke the aid of public sympathy,) and the wanton pro- 
fanation of the names of the immortal Gallileo, Harvey 
and Fulton, by presuming to assimilate their discoveries 
with the Hahnemanic humbug, the writer has well suc- 
ceeded in rendering " darkness visible" by an attempt 
to demonstrate his art by a reference to malaria, conta- 
gion, electricity, and others, their congenial imponder- 
ables. So far he has safely indulged in flippant specu- 
lation and imaginary deduction in proof of homoeopathy, 
without essential hazard to his reputation for sagacity 
and medical learning, for the reason, that such is the 
general ignorance regarding the nature of these subtle 
and indefinable elements, that visionary assertion and 
criticism hold a like unsubstantial basis. It may be 
stated here, that no honest rational individual, con- 
versant with the visible operations of such agencies as 
electricity, galvanism, caloric, and gravitation, will at- 
tempt to establish an analogy between their manifest 
forces and that of an atom, or monad of gross matter, 
such as is pretended to be detached by Hahnemanic at- 
tenuation, and exhibited, a solitary wanderer, in its rela- 
tively deep profound, a drop of distilled water, or impris- 
soned within the granular pastry sphere, after its arrest 
by the ingenious device of the infinitesimal manipulator. 

The forces above named (for aught we know) may 
be identical ; and, like fluids generally, when their equi- 
librium is interrupted, may act with an energy derived 
from the entire mass with which the disturbed portion 



156 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

the most limited amount of evidence adduced 
in its support, presents the probability that it is 



is connected. These, however, are expedient subter- 
fuges for the support of a baseless fabric, like that of 
homoeopathy, and its advocates have not failed to retreat 
within their obscure precincts for refuge, when pursued 
by the overwhelming demonstrations of reason, and the 
equally forcible proofs derived from the senses. Unfor- 
tunately for himself, however, the writer, in his zeal to 
popularize his art, has ventured upon the more definite 
and comprehensible domain of pathology, for a demon- 
stration of his favorite infinitesimals. This being so man- 
ifestly designed for sensible effect on the class of sufferers 
from the affection instanced, is worthy of a passing no- 
tice, lest the beauty of the artfully adjusted pelt should 
divert attention from the elongated ears concealed be- 
neath. Thus it reads : " While the system is in an 
abnormal condition, it is more susceptible of impressions 
or influences than when in a normal or healthy state. A 
blow, for instance, which would inflict very little pain 
on a healthy body, would have caused great agony had 
it fallen on an inflamed part." Ergo : " From what has 
been stated, it will be perceived by the unprejudiced 
mind, that minute doses of homoeopathic, or specific 
remedies, may possess the power of effecting a mighty 
revolution in a diseased organic structure or tissue, 
while no change is wrought upon the normal or healthy 
portion of the system. Experience, our best teacher, 
most faithfully sustains us in this conclusion." 

Impressed with such a sensible and feelingly demon- 
strative argumentation, it is difficult to decide in what 
dilemma the sagacious reasone?' ought to hold a rank. It 
will, however, appear manifest to every intelligent mind 
that has escaped the bias of the " one idea," that by this 
appeal to the acute sensibilities of those who have expe- 



HOMOEOPATHY. 157 

destined to supplant the long confirmed prin- 
ciples of existing medical science, then may 



rienced a " blow" on a boil, or other species of inflamma- 
tion, the writer has hoped, by the re-excitement of the 
agonizing twinge, (when listening to his teachings,) to 
smother the reasoning, by an appeal to the sensitive ca- 
pacities, and therefore falls into the category of the 
knave ; or, (which is equally inexcusable,) that he is ut- 
terly deficient in a knowledge of the vital phenomena and 
laws controling the animal economy, whether in health 
or disease, rendering him, consequently, incompetent 
for the office of the physician ; and, therefore, that he 
legitimately ranks with the empirical pretender. 

Such must necessarily be the conclusion formed re- 
garding the assumption above presented. Those but 
moderately versed in the science of physiology and pa- 
thology, are doubtless aware that the instance, so com- 
placently adduced, is one in which mechanical causes 
are often effective in its production ; and its attendant, 
acute sensibility, (so feelingly depicted,) is solely the re- 
sult of mechanical irritation of the local nerves of the 
part affected, produced by an embarrassed or altered 
circulation within the diseased space ; the consequent 
accumulation of fluids, causing pressure or distention ; 
and the changes of structure constituting the disease. In 
cases where the inflammation is sufficiently extensive to 
involve the system in the diseased sympathetic action, 
an inordinate torpor of the general functions result, in 
consequence of the withdrawal from these of a portion 
of their ordinary vital energy, and its concentration 
upon the disordered part, for the temporary sustentation 
of its embarrassed vitality. This is proved by the at- 
tendant general languor, headache, torpor of the diges- 
tive functions, &c. In this state, all experience proves, 
that increased quantities and more energetic qualities 

14* 



/ 



158 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

it be admitted, that science, like dynasties and 
political institutions, is subject to revolutions 

of remedies are requisite to produce a given amount of 
action than is demanded in a state of healthy function. 

The causes of disease are, unquestionably, of a de- 
bilitating or sedative character, and their operation ever 
tends to a suppression of the vital power. Hence in- 
ductive reasoning teaches, and all experience derived 
from observation correspondingly proves, that doses of 
medicines efficient in a state of health, generally (in a 
greater or less degree) fail to arouse the desirable and 
requisite energies in the system, when torporized by the 
causes of general disease. There are few sufferers from 
the ordinary bilious affections who are not aware, from 
painful experience, that common cathartic doses, to 
prove effective, often require a repetition of from two 
to twenty-fold the quantities required to produce the 
same degree of effect in health or the slighter ailments. 
Cramp of the stomach, and other spasmodic orneui*algic 
affections, are known by all witnessing or experiencing 
the intense sufferings therefrom, (whether physician or 
non-professional,) to require, and the system is well 
known to tolerate, in such cases, quantities enormously 
increased beyond those ordinarily administered in the 
milder affections and in health. In fact, in these and 
many other of the most grave affections, but little or no 
degree of influence toward their removal is obtained, 
except from quantities of remedies which would prove 
extremely hazardous of administration to the same sub- 
jects in a condition of health. 

Indeed, few instances of the more grave diseases 
exist, (not excepting severe inflammation, though a 
local affection,) in which observation, substantiated by 
all rational experience of the effects of medicines, does 
not infallibly prove, that the causes of disease have so 
depreciated and diminished the vital energies of the 



\ 



HOMCEOPATHY. 159 

from slight incidental causes ; and that no pro- 
duction of the human mind approximates to 
stability. In such bewildering and deplorable 
contemplation of mental imbecility, we must 
be compelled to consider universal experience 
of mankind, but as a suspected aggregation of 
error, the more mischievous and dangerous 
because strengthened by lapse of time and 
concurrence of numbers in its capricious dog- 
mas. Indeed, in this drama, in which the 
human mind is represented in characters so 
humiliating, the senses appear as without other 
standard than individual caprice, and reason 
itself but as a mental principle, whose conclu- 
sions possess a like instability with its subtle 
creative rival, imagination. 

But no such depressing view of the insta- 
bility of all mental products, need be enter- 
tained. The rationalist may still, with confi- 
dence, expect a confirmation of the principles 
so ardently collated and compiled, as those 
constituting the basis of medical, as well as^its 
collateral sciences ; while no prophetic vision 
is required to confirm his convictions, that ho- 



system, as to require a power in remedies additional to 
that abundantly effective in health or slight affections. 
This is generally indispensable to excite their requisite 
action in the several organs, when torporized and embar- 
rassed by formidable disease. 



J 60 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

mceopathy, like its kindred empirical systems, 
though enabled probably to sustain a brief ex- 
istence through its successive periods of juven- 
ility, adolescence, and senility, will pass un- 
honored to the tomb of its predecessors — 
where its congenital epitaph, 

Requiescat in pace, 

has ever been legibly enstamped, for the view 
of every reflective observer of the frailty of 
its structure. 



SECTION VIII. 

Mesmerism. 

Society has recently been surprised by the 
announcement of a new agent in mental sci- 
ence, termed mesmerism, which, from its in- 
tricate and unexplained principles, may well 
be ranked with the occult sciences of the 
middle ages. Like alchemy and astrology, 
it can claim no support from any known da- 
ta, or even analogies supplied by the ordinary 
properties or laws of matter and mind. Al- 
though it has not yet claimed the introduc- 
tion to the astonished senses of invisible per- 
sonalities, like those evoked by the wand of 
the magician, or the conjuror, yet by mani- 
pulations equally enigmatical, termed passes, 
it affects the manifestation of hitherto latent 
entities no less mysterious, which, if inferior 
in corporiety, possess energies no less potent 
than their more defined ghostly rivals, educed 
by the necromancer. It need not be stated, 
that the mesmeric empiric assumes the ability 
to communicate his own ideas to the mind of 
his patient, whose individual identity he 
claims to have fascinated by the charm of his 
mysterious passes to an amalgamation with 



162 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

his own, and made it obedient to the influences 
by which his own is governed; and that in 
this condition, an intercommunication of 
thought is effected without the aid of signs 
addressed to the senses, but by the agency 
of his personal volition alone. By such ex- 
traordinary pretensions, it will be perceived 
that the entire agency of the senses in origi- 
nating ideas in the mind, may be dispensed 
with ; and that instead of these being the ex- 
clusive channels through which the mind 
takes cognizance of agencies exterior to itself, 
mesmerism has traced an avenue of mental 
perception, by which its power is manifestly 
exaggerated above that which it derived from 
grosser sensible influences. This must ap- 
pear to any one possessing a knowledge of 
the mental properties, or even with the ordi- 
nary operations of his own mind, too ridicu- 
lous and absurd to require a serious refuta- 
tion. 

It announces a principle of mental percep- 
tion, or a mode of originating ideas, wholly at 
variance with any known laws governing 
mind ; holding, it is true, an analogy with its 
manifestations in dreams, visions, and super- 
natural revelations, but essentially differing 
from either, and far surpassing them all in 
mental prodigies exhibited. Dreams, it being 
understood, consisting in fanciful combina- 



MESMERISM. 163 

tions of former sensations in store in the 
mind, while the others are affirmed to consist 
in direct impressions of ideas, by means of an 
extra-natural agency, acting through ordinary 
sensations and intellect; while mesmerism, 
by its prescribed conditions and formal ges- 
ticulation, affects to suspend the volition, sen- 
sation, and intellect of its recipient, and to 
convert her mind into a mental mirror, by 
which is reflected, not only the ideas of the 
actor, but the shadows of the invisible present 
and the future are depicted in outlines more 
definite than those delineated through the 
prophetic inspiration of the scriptures. 

Now the principles upon which all the as- 
serted phenomena of mesmerism depend, af- 
ter deducting the collusions of its empirical 
pretenders, are undoubtedly the same which 
have been noticed in all ages as erratic sympa- 
thies occasionally manifested in individuals 
of excitable nervous systems, when subjected 
to influences of a novel and unwonted char- 
acter. 

It has not been sufficiently considered by 
the admirers of mesmerism, that a collusion 
is possible between the manipulator and the 
mesmerised, through which a language of 
signs may exist, by means of which each, in 
their exhibitions, is understood by the other, 
and upon which it is presumable most of its 



164 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

pretended phenomena are dependent. Even 
a tedious discipline would not be required, to 
enable individuals of ordinary intelligence to 
adopt signs, based upon vocal inflections, em- 
phasis, and intonations, together with modes 
of questioning and other significant action, 
by which interrogations relative to the great- 
est variety of objects and ideas, might be an- 
swered with an accuracy equaling the most 
astonishing coincidences which have been 
exhibited by the mesmeric mountebank as 
proofs of his pretended science. 

Without a detail of the singular history of 
particular cases of somnambulism, which have 
ever been of occasional occurrence, independ- 
ent of the aid of manipulations, and previous 
to the pretended existence of a special mes- 
meric art, we would refer to hysteria and 
catalepsy, nervous affections often excited by 
mental emotion, in which are exhibited occa- 
sionally erratic phenomena, no less singular 
than the real facts which mesmerism, in sub- 
jects suitably organized for its experiments, 
undoubtedly may effect. But the former are 
manifested without the aid of the imposing 
mysterious gesticulation, the induced sympa- 
thetic emotion, the faith and credulity of the 
patient, which must be admitted as essentially 
contributing to the induction of the phenom- 
ena of the latter. Ecstasy, trance and cho- 



MESMERISM. 165 

rea * with their singular manifestations, may 
be mentioned as presenting irregularities in 



* Those curious to learn some of the singular phe- 
nomena of the nervous system, when in a disordered 
state, may find such detailed in several cases of these 
affections (viz. trance, chorea, &c.) mentioned in Black- 
wood's Magazine, No. 379, for May, 1846. These 
cases occurred and were treated as grave nervous affec- 
tions, and as they were mostly anterior to the era of the 
recent art of mesmerism, of course they will not be 
claimed as eductions of its artificial formalities. A 
double consciousness characterizes most of these cases ; 
i. e., the patients, (who were females,) when affected, lost 
the consciousness of what had passed previous to the at- 
tack, and, vice versa, had no knowledge of their acts 
during the intervals. In three cases mentioned, one by 
M. Petatin in 1787, one by M. Delpet, 1807, and one by 
Dr. Despine, 1829, the patients " did not see with their 
eyes nor hear with their ears. But they heard at the pit 
of the stomach, and perceived the approach of persons 
when at some distance from their residence, and read the 
thoughts of those around." Another case is mentioned, 
the subject of which "could read by the touch alone; if 
she pressed her hand against the whole surface of a writ- 
ten or printed page, she acquired a perfect knowledge of 
its contents. A line of a folded note, pressed against the 
back of her neck, she read equally well. She called this 
sense feeling" 

Similar cases have ever abounded in medical history, 
and, although great allowance is doubtless to be made 
for collusion and deceptions, sufficiently adroit to escape 
the detection of spectators, and often their medical at- 
tendants, enough remains as reality to exhibit the occa- 
sional extraordinary perversion of sensation, and the 
extreme acute susceptibility of the senses, when influ- 

15 



166 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

mental action, of an extraordinary, and oc- 
casionally of a most marvelous character. 
Epilepsy often occurs from sympathy, on wit- 
nessing others affected with the real disease, 
as occurred among a large number of factory 
girls in Lancashire, England. This sympa- 
thetic affection originated from a female, who 
became affected with spasms, in consequence 
of a mouse being mischievously placed in her 
bosom, by one of her companions. Large 
numbers witnessing the disorder, were in like 
manner affected, and it even extended through- 
out the neighborhood and its vicinity, and did 
not terminate for a considerable period. The 
dancing mania,* which occurred in Europe in 



enced by certain diseased conditions of the nervous 
system. There is little doubt, however, that in most 
cases where the ordinary sphere of the senses has been 
thus extensively enlarged, a vanity to astonish by mar- 
velous exhibitions has induced the patients, (either 
by a collusion with friends, or by individual suggestion,) 
to add a variety of deception to their disordered abili- 
ties, for the purpose of promulgating a reputation which 
they were conscious it was within their power to ac- 
quire through the extraordinary acquisition. 

* This affection commenced, and was attended 
throughout its course, with an irresistible propensity to 
dance. It was considered a purely nervous affection, 
and was propagated by sympathy or imitation, on wit- 
nessing others affected. 

A case of imitative cholera convulsions was related to 
the author by a credible spectator, which occurred on a 



MESMERISM. 167 

the fourteenth century, and continued a pe- 
riod of some years, was a sympathetic disor- 
der, in which the strange abnormities of the 
nervous system became manifest to a most 
alarming extent. 

Witchcraft, when prevailing as an epidem- 
ic, as has frequently been the case in all civ- 
ilized countries, aroused the erratic elements 
of the mind, and led most of society to a be- 
lief that they were the witnesses, and in many 
instances even the subjects, of the marvelous 
tales which emanated from the illusion. 

Sympathy is one of the inexplicable phe- 
nomena of animated beings, which has ever 

attracted the attention of philosophers. 

Through this influence, the lulling motion of 
a carriage, the placid water-fall, the silent mo- 
tion of forests agitated by the gentle breeze, 



Mississippi steamboat in 1833. An individual, a fellow- 
passenger of the narrator, in a cabin conversation on 
cholera, profanely expressed his disbelief of the horrid 
spasms and convulsions usually attendant on the disease ; 
and after an oath expressing a wish to disprove such by 
personal observation of a case, pronounced all such rela- 
tion a humbug. He was soon after called to be a spec- 
tator of a severe case of cholera, occurring among the 
passengers on deck. After intently gazing a few mo- 
ments at the fearfully convulsed invalid, he fell on the 
deck in convulsions similar to those witnessed, which, 
however, subsided on his being conveyed to bed, without 
other characteristics of the disease being manifested. 



168 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

with a variety of other motions, tend to and 
often effect placid sleep. Such are simple ef- 
fects produced upon an organism so adapted 
to the arrangement of nature, that health and 
enjoyment may be derived therefrom.* But 

* It may be here stated, for the information of the 
general reader, that the term sympathy, as employed in 
this work, is generally used in its physiological or medi- 
cal signification. It is one of the most prominent facts 
in physiology, that by a mutual interchange of nerves, 
by which the cerebral influence is conveyed throughout 
the system, such intimate connection exists as to cause 
each organ to partake of the affections of its congeners, 
whether diseased or healthful. 

The mental structure of man is such, that not only 
his corporeal structure generally, participates in its 
affections, but through its influence the entire organic 
action is prone to assume an affection similar to that 
manifested in its associates, whether of a healthful or dis- 
ordered character. This sympathy between the several 
organs, as well as that operating externally, generally 
holds a correspondence with the exalted susceptibility, 
or the ordinary healthy state of the nervous system. 

In view of such controling influence of the nervous 
system on the organic economy, and of the efficacy of 
mesmerism, in many instances, in arousing those dor- 
mant sympathetic energies, which are often indicative 
of predispositions to nervous disease, it may not be an 
unprofitable suggestion to its professors, that when, from 
a subsidence of its novelties, its profits become lessened, 
it be proffered as a test, or (if the coinage be allowable) 
j>athometer y by which such state may be detected, and 
perhaps by their aid, hysterics, with some other equally 
grave nervous affections, may be pre-announced to the 
inquisitive of future health and prospects. 



MESMERISM. 169 

when we consider the mesmeriser, armed 
with his ridiculous but affectedly mysterious 
passes; the prescribed fixed position of the 
patient's eyes upon those of the operator ; and 
the novel condition of the credulous expect- 
ant of a mysterious effect; aided in most 
cases by an overpowering faith in expected 
changes about to be induced by the necro- 
tic display of the manipulator, it is little sur- 
prising that those of extreme nervous suscepti- 
bility should yield their powers, by means of 
such imposing influence, to a state of torpor, 
like that recently termed mesmeric sleep. 
There is no doubt, that the induction of this 
state by artificial means is possible, and may 
have really been effected by the agency of 
the mesmeriser. But there is little reason to 
doubt, that with this effect his personal agency 
terminates; and that the remainder of the 
manifestations of mesmerism, exclusive of a 
collusion between the actor and the recipient, 
are but accidental effusions of irregular trains 
of ideas, such as exist in the mind of a dream- 
er during a disturbed and unnatural state of 
sleep. This form of sleep would be that likely 
to succeed the active mental influence alluded 
to, and its phenomena would more naturally 
be elicited by an address to the partially 
wakeful senses through the actor by whom 
such state had been adduced. But it is 

15* 



170 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

probable that most of its visible demonstra- 
tions result merely from a concerted collusion 
between a knave and an impostor, who con- 
duct the jugglery. Indeed, the realities of this 
art, instead of being a newly discovered prin- 
ciple in physiological or psychological sci- 
ence, is but a compilation of long known facts, 
wrought into an art, and invested with a suf- 
ficiency of marvels to impose upon the pub- 
lic credulity, for mercenary or other sinister 
considerations. 

The frequent confessions of mesmerists, 
that their art is inadequate to derive its phe- 
nomena from a considerable number of indi- 
viduals, upon whom its efforts are exerted, 
ought to confirm skepticism in its disbelief of 
the claims which it proffers. It affords the 
strongest grounds for the presumption, that 
the subjects who are really impressed by its 
influence, are those whose nervous systems 
have acquired a morbidly susceptible state, 
while the apathetic or unimpressible, are those 
in whom it has retained its healthy equilib- 
rium. 

It is an undoubted fact, that the brain and 
nervous system of very many individuals, es- 
pecially those of the more delicately formed 
females, though in a state of apparent regu- 
larity of function, are, in some degree, actually 
in a morbidly susceptible condition. 



MESMERISM. 171 

This state has generally been induced 
through the almost innumerable exciting caus- 
es which exist, and are operative throughout 
all civilized communities ; and as the abo- 
riginal tribes are little subject to like affec- 
tion, it may be conceived that they are evils 
which civilization suffers as a penalty for the 
vices which it originates and cherishes. 

This constitutional imperfection is unques- 
tionably derived from a great diversity of 
causes. Among these may be enumerated, the 
predisposition derived from hereditary trans- 
mission. It also has been the product of 
agencies originating through the manners and 
customs of refined societies, such as the 
unnatural and inordinate exercise of the 
passions, in prosecuting the objects of a mor- 
bidly aspiring ambition for the imaginary 
boon which the distinctions of wealth and 
honors confer. It has likewise originated from 
the intemperance of fashion and appetite, as 
well as from the various wants and privations 
which abound in all civilized communities. 
All these, by opposing a counteracting influ- 
ence to a healthful action of the natural laws of 
the animal economy, tend to effect a derange- 
ment of the normal vital functions, and to in- 
duce, if not actual disease, at least those un- 
natural susceptibilities of the nervous system, 
which essentially control their manifestations. 



172 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

Such, it is presumed, are the efficient influ- 
ences to which mesmerism is indebted for the 
real facts by which it sustains its mountebank- 
ery, as well as medical history for the mani- 
festation of erratic sympathies, by which 
many grave diseases are simulated, and often 
made formidable. By these the effects of re- 
medial agents are made abnormal, and they, 
doubtless, develop for contemplation the almost 
innumerable moral obliquities, such as are ex- 
hibited in wild fanaticism, and the various 
extatic excitations and delusions, which have 
baffled the speculation of moralists and meta- 
physicians, in their attempts to systematize 
the mental operations. 

Instances in corroboration of the above po- 
sition, relative to the influence of sympathy 
and imagination upon the nervous tempera- 
ment, in the production of phenomena of a 
similar character to those of mesmerism, might 
to any extent be adduced ; but a further de- 
tail is deemed unnecessary. The pretended 
prophetic abilities of persons in a mesmeric 
state, their acquirement of new faculties and 
perceptions, such as the ignorant evincing a 
knowledge of the organic economy, its de- 
rangements, and the appropriate remedies, su- 
perior to that of the most scientific physician, 
are absurdities which it would be humiliating 
seriously to attempt to refute. 



MESMERISM. 173 

With such view of the animal economy and 
its occasional manifestations as an attentive 
research into its history furnishes, it will ap- 
pear obvious, that all the pretensions of mes- 
merism are founded upon the exceptionable 
phenomena of the nervous system ; and that 
its actual exhibitions are but a solicitation of 
these, by the imposing formulary which it 
employs. 

It will therefore be perceived, that the prin- 
cipal merit which the originators of the art 
can justly claim for the pretended discovery 
is, that by their ridiculous mummery they 
have been able to arouse dormant sympathies, 
which may be conceived indicative of those 
latent conditions of the animal economy, 
termed predispositions, which hitherto were 
mainly unfolded by the more active exciting 
causes of disordered action. 

Had mesmerism, and the exploded phe- 
nomena once claimed as being obedient to the 
metalic tractors of the celebrated Perkins,* 



* Perkins was an American, who, about the close of 
the last or commencement of the present century, pre- 
tended to have made the discovery that certain steel 
instruments, styled metalic tractors, constructed in a 
prescribed form, and charged with magnetism, a la mode 
Perkins, possessed the ability, in his hands, by certain 
peculiar strokings over the body, or at the parts affected, 
to beguile the disease from its habitation, and thereby 



174 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

existed as cotemporaries, there is little doubt 
that each might have derived powerful aid 
from a union ; or, perchance, had their re- 
spective claims assumed an attitude of rivalry, 
a contest would, probably, have ensued for 
precedence, terminating both more speedily, 
through the efforts of their respective friends 
to expose the follies which constituted the 
principal facts upon which each was based. 

It is certainly a deplorable contemplation, 
that such irrational claims as those presented 



cause it to be ejected from the system. The author, after 
effecting numerous infallible cures on his countrymen, 
who possessed sufficient faith in the marvelous power of 
his tractors, and from whom he reaped no inconsiderable 
pecuniary harvest, visited England with the view to test 
their efficiency on the distended pockets of the more 
wealthy Englishmen. His prospects there became 
highly flattering, until a distinguished but envious " regu- 
lar" threw his tractable reputation into convulsions, by 
mischievously employing, on some credulous converts to 
tractoration, instruments of wood, formed and painted 
to represent the real tractors, which proved equally 
salutary in their effects with the magical reality of Per- 
kins. The author's professional and pecuniary vitality 
remaining after these malignant experiments, became 
completely extracted by an ingenious burlesque poem, 
entitled " Terrible Tractoration/ ' assailing the unlucky 
tractors, written by Thomas Green Fessenden, an au- 
thor of burlesque notoriety. The unfortunate Perkins 
returned to his country after this signal failure in his 
contemplated projects, a striking memorial of popular 
gullibility and the fate of imposture. 



MESMERISM. 175 

by mesmerism, should attract other attention, 
in an intellectual period like the present, than 
a speedy consignment of its promulgators to a 
rank with the impostors who have, too suc- 
cessfully, ever made traffick of the simplicity of 
the injudiciously confiding and credulous of 
all communities. That mesmerism, however, 
with all its pretensions and wonders as a new 
and distinct science, is destined to be num- 
bered with the delusions with which the 
present age is affected, cannot be a matter 
of rational doubt with those physiologically 
investigating its character. 



If evidence was required to show that the 
public mind is, at this time, far from being in a 
rationally healthy condition ; that it is subject 
to the dictates of passion and imagination, 
rather than of reason and common sense ; re- 
ference might be made to the success of the 
various fanatical systems of religion, and the 
innumerable political theories, which have 
been, and are perpetually invented, and which 
are attracting to their standards adherents in 
this and other countries. For illustration of 
this, we need but instance the success which 
has attended Mormonism, Millerism, Four- 
rierism, Socialism, and various others too nu- 



176 CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION. 

merous to mention. So successful have been 
the promulgators of such systems, in acquiring 
proselytes to doctrines, however ridiculous and 
absurd, that it would not be inapt to liken so- 
ciety to an infinitely chorded instrument, the 
vibration from any chord of which is capable 
of deriving a response, in harmonious unison, 
from the minds of some individuals composing 
its entire mass. 



A 

PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAY 

O N 

ANIMAL FASCINATION, OR CHARMING. 

A common belief exists with a large por- 
tion of society, that serpents, and some other 
animals of a formidable character, are armed 
with a mysterious power, termed fascination, 
or charming, by which they exert a silent 
but efficient and destructive influence over 
their marked victims, which is operative 
through a space that would render nugatory 
the ordinary power which they possess for 
their arrest. 

Although it may not be strictly proper to 
consider such belief either as a credulity or 
superstition, yet as it is believed that this is 
one of the erroneous notions which have been 
derived from, and is dependent upon physical 
causes, existing principally in the victim of its 
supposed influence, and not from the existence 
of a real power in these animals themselves, 
any further than as being objects of dread and 
apprehension, it is, therefore, deemed not 
unprofitable to notice this asserted singular 
power, as a correlative of these, which has 
contributed its aid to the variety of fallacies 
16 



178 ANIMAL FASCINATION. 

proceeding from their prolific fountains of 
mental error. 

Whatever may be the facts upon which 
the belief in fascination, as a distinct animal 
power, is founded, it is most probable that the 
deductions therefrom are erroneous; and that 
these, instead of being adequate to establish 
such conclusions, ought to be viewed but as 
manifestations of faculties which all animals 
exhibit in a manner adapted to the varied con- 
ditions of their existence. 

If a belief in the real existence of ghosts, 
of witchcraft, or mesmerism, is to be alone 
tested by the apparent facts which are adduced 
in their support, their reality, as a conse- 
quence, must be admitted. But if (as is be- 
lieved to be the fact) these can be shown to 
be illusions, emanating either from a disor- 
dered condition of the optic nerves, or the 
brain ; from an excited imagination ; or from 
an occasional singular manifestation of a dis- 
eased nervous system; then their existence 
as distinct agencies becomes annihilated, and 
they are to be considered merely as dis- 
eased, or abnormal actions, which vitality, 
when under peculiar influences, or when in 
an unnatural state, exhibits. So if it can be 
made to appear as probable, that the facts ad- 
duced in support of fascination, as a distinct 
and singular power attributed to some ani- 
mals only, are but the varied exercise of a 



ANIMAL FASCINATION. 179 

sagacity, which all, in a greater or less degree, 
possess, then the marvel of such incompre- 
hensible agent ceases, and the mind is led 
rather to admire that superior wisdom which 
has devised such a wonderful adaptation in 
the economy of living beings, without resort- 
ing to a profuse multiplication of agencies in 
effecting its preservation. 

It is a characteristic of the mind, to invest 
with extra- natural power whatever excites its 
extreme dread and apprehension. This men- 
tal trait is more especially manifested when 
the cause of such affection is rendered diffi- 
cult of investigation, either from the dangers 
with which it is attended, or from the sub- 
tleties and mystery by which it is enveloped. 
Thus death, to the philosophic spectator of 
the event, presents but the natural phenome- 
na incident to the cessation of organic action ; 
yet to the ignorant and credulous it often ex- 
cites the notion of such extra-natural influ- 
ences, superinduced at the period of dissolu- 
tion, as to render it an object of superstitious 
dread and apprehension. 

The most deadly poisons have ever, by ere- * 
dulity, been invested with qualities allied to 
the marvelous, such as have never been veri- 
fied in any substance in nature. But scien- 
tific analysis, by designating and defining their 
reahproperties, has mostly dispelled the mys- 
tery which once magnified their powers ; 



180 ANIMAL FASCINATION. 

and these, though now viewed as formidable 
agencies, excite but a small degree of terror, 
in comparison with that derived from their 
magical history. 

There are no members of the animal king- 
dom, however formidable many may be to 
man, that excite such natural abhorrence 
and dread, as do those of the serpent species. 
This affection, although mainly derived from 
their formidable and dangerous character, is, 
no doubt, essentially aggravated (in the view 
of many) by associations derived from sacred 
historical evidence regarding their agency in 
effecting original transgression, so vitally af- 
fecting human destiny. Such views and agen- 
cy, associated with the observation of his wily 
instincts, together with his naturally repulsive 
form and singular actions, have, beyond doubt, 
presented the serpent species to the ever pro- 
lific imagination, as endowed with qualities 
more mysterious and formidable than any 
other species. 

It may perhaps be objected, that was fasci- 
nation an imaginary power, derived from 
such source, it ought alone to be manifested 
in formidable animals, and not in those less 
noxious, as the feline, or cat species, and some 
others, ordinarily viewed with indifference. 
But it may be answered, that a character 
termed formidable, is to be estimated but in 



ANIMAL FASCINATION. 181 

view of the relations that exist between the va- 
rious species ; and that these relations can 
alone be determined from observation of the 
natural hostility of animals, and the modes by 
which the stronger effect the destruction of 
their weaker adversaries. In all cases of the 
existence of these hostile connections, there is 
little question that the superior are viewed by 
the inferior kinds, in an attitude no less ter- 
rible and dangerous, than are the most ven- 
omous of the serpent species by man. 

Was the asserted power of fascination a 
real endowment of any animal, it might ra- 
tionally be presumed, that it would be em- 
ployed on all occasions, and at all seasons 
when the promptings of appetite were instant 
and urgent ; which is evidently far from being 
the fact, as ordinary physical force is that 
generally employed, both by serpents and the 
feline kinds, in arresting the animals on which 
they prey. 

The species that are the reputed victims of 
fascination, such as the smaller birds, squirrels, 
&c, (from which most instances of the exer- 
tion of this singular faculty are derived,) gene- 
rally seek the vicinity of the dwellings of 
man, at their periods of rearing offspring, 
probably from the instinctive or acquired con- 
sciousness, that most of their more powerful 
16* 



182 ANIMAL FASCINATION. 

adversaries avoid such localities. It is in 
these situations where most of the cases of 
supposed charming are brought within obser- 
vation. Although various instances to the 
contrary may doubtless be adduced, it is pre- 
sumed that attentive investigation will demon- 
strate, that the victim is ever within the parent- 
al domain which the intruder has invaded. It 
is likewise believed, that the season when its 
operation has been mostly observed, is that of 
propagation and rearing of their young. If 
exceptions occasionally occur, it is, most 
probable, where individuals of species have 
accidentally been delayed in the exercise of 
this important annual instinct. At this pe- 
riod, these animals furnish indubitable evi- 
dence, that parental anxiety and solicitude 
often lead to a disregard of the ordinary love 
of life, when the safety of their offspring 
requires its hazardous exposure for their de- 
fense. 

It is mainly from analogical evidence, de- 
rived from observation of similar habits in 
different species, and of some phenomena 
asserted to have been tested by the experience 
of a few of the human species, in their con- 
nection with reptiles, that the power of fasci- 
nation has been claimed as an endowment 
possessed by cats and other less noxious ani- 
mals. As instances which have been witnessed 



ANIMAL FASCINATION. 183 

are of most rare occurrence, the question of its 
existence, as a distinct faculty, becomes nar- 
rowed to a degree, that the most rational doubts 
may well be entertained whether it does not 
admit of explanation, as being a varied opera- 
tion of faculties possessed in common with 
predatory animals generally. 

It is worthy of consideration, in a discussion 
on this more than doubtful faculty, that it is 
not claimed as being possessed but by a very 
limited number of species, — and these are in- 
variably such as in ordinary physical arma- 
ture, for the arrest of their objects of prey, are 
adequately endowed, without the superaddi- 
tion of such faculty to secure the necessities 
for their existence. Indeed, in a comparison, 
they appear to surpass most other animals in 
their offensive and defensive armor. An ar- 
gument might therefore be adduced against 
the existence of such attribute, from a specula- 
tion upon the compensating equalities which 
the divine economy has ever been recognized 
as observing, in its supply of endowments to 
the animal kingdom. Such provisionary com- 
pensation has not only arrested the attention, 
but it has excited the admiration of every at- 
tentive observer of the animal, and even the 
vegetable kingdoms. 

In such view, speed, instinct, or intellect, will 
ever be found as antagonistic to superiority of 



]84 ANIMAL FASCINATION. 

strength and armature ; and separate or sever- 
ally, have been exercised with sufficient success 
to insure the perpetuation of the species pos- 
sessing them. Were it otherwise, or were 
such a dangerous invisible agency as that of 
fascination, superadded to the ordinary power- 
ful armature of animals of such ferocious dis- 
positions as the asserted wielders of fascina- 
tion, it might well be questioned whether the 
existence of species, against which its influ- 
ence was exerted, could be for any consider- 
able period insured ; more especially in the 
localities inhabited by their highly gifted an- 
tagonists. 

If further facts were required to show that 
the admission of a faculty, like that presented 
by fascination, was a figment of the imagina- 
tion, derived from the formidable affection of 
animals to which it has been attributed, as 
well as its furnishing an exceptionable de- 
viation in the manifest principle of the divine 
economy in supplying endowments to animals, 
it may be stated, that it has been supposed to 
be possessed only by the small portion of the 
serpent species, which are the most formidable, 
in consequence of their dangerous properties, 
while the weaker and inoffensive varieties, 
that are viewed with less dread, but possess a 
similar organization, and consequently similar 
necessities, are supposed wanting the important 



ANIMAL FASCINATION. 185 

provision. It will therefore be perceived, that 
this view confers on some members of the 
same family, a multiplicity of power for pro- 
viding sustenance and defense, whilst others, 
in comparison, are greatly defective in means 
for sustaining their organic wants. 

The scriptural history of the serpent, as 
well as many of his peculiar structural actions 
and habits, have ever enshrouded his character 
in no inconsiderable degree of mystery. It 
is, therefore, not singular that the imagination 
should have invested him with properties de- 
viating from those of other animals. Nor 
does it present a singularity in mental asso- 
ciation, that a mysterious power, once admit- 
ted, should be applied to all such animals as 
effect the aims of their nature through anala- 
gous influences, however baseless, in fact, may 
have been the notion that originated the be- 
lief of its existence. 

It is not denied that phenomena similar to 
those believed to exist as effects of a fascina- 
ting power, have been apparently manifested 
by some animals toward the victims of its sup- 
posed influence. But as it is inconceivable 
that an agent should be operative in circum- 
stances and in a form like that in question, 
an attempt will be made briefly to elucidate 
the phenomena presented, by principles fur- 
nished from the more familiar attributes of the 



186 ANIMAL FASCINATION. 

animal economy. Although, in the view taken> 
a marvelous and incomprehensible power may 
be dissipated, yet an explanation of the real 
facts of fascination may be afforded, more ac- 
cordant with the known vital laws. 

The ability is asserted for the fascinating 
animal, to present to its supposed spell-bound 
victim, colors the most enchanting, and the ac- 
quirement of such control of the senses and 
mental faculty, that an irresistible impulse 
operates to urge the victim, involuntarily, to 
a horrid destruction, which, in the unbiassed 
state of the mind, is, above all others, the most 
repulsive and terrible. Even with the irre- 
sistible impulse to approach the danger, a 
resistance is, for a period, instituted by an 
antagonistic dread, which vainly strives in re- 
sistance of the foe, and only yields the contest 
to a multiplication of the impalpable power, 
and by the continued efforts and approach of 
the deadly charmer. 

For the purpose of showing that during the 
exhibition of effects like these, the supposed 
fascinator exerts but a passive agency, except 
that imparted by the influence of his naturally 
formidable character, and that the operating 
cause, by which such effects are produced, 
exist mostly in the apparent spell-bound vic- 
tim, reference will here briefly be made to 
physical facts of a less mysterious character, 



ANIMAL FASCINATION. 187 

which are presumed capable of producing 
similar phenomena, and which are believed 
adequate to solve the mysterious enigma of 
animal fascination. 

It is a principle in optics, familiar to those 
versed in the science, that an intense view of 
any one of the original or compound colors, 
for a period varying in different individuals, 
produces a change of the image of the color 
first formed on the retina, and in its stead is 
introduced that of a color opposite, or varying 
from that first apparent This phenomenon 
is what is termed occular spectra, or acci- 
dental colors, and may at any time be made to 
appear by intently observing, as for example, a 
red color, for a sufficient time, on a white 
ground. In this instance, the red will diminish 
in brilliancy, and a yellow spectrum will ap- 
pear on the white ground by averting the eye 
thence. In like manner, by the substitution 
of different colors, different spectra will be 
exhibited, as blue for orange, white for black, 
black for white, &c. Such change occurs, it 
will be understood, in all the colors, when 
placed on opposite ground to that of the color 
first made the subject of experiment. This 
change is, doubtless, to be explained from the 
fatigue induced upon the fibres of the optic 
nerve, by means of the unusual stimulus of the 
vivid image acting on the retina. It will be 



188 ANIMAL FASCINATION. 

readily perceived, that by the action of this 
natural optical phenomenon, in a steady view 
of objects of variegated colors, a constant 
succession of changes in the several tints will 
occur, — capable, in many cases, of presenting 
to the mind a splendid variety of brilliant and 
pleasing hues. 

Fear, when operating in its greatest inten- 
sity, undoubtedly holds the strongest and most 
engrossing influence over the intellect of any 
of the mental affections. Such is the control 
which it exerts over the mind, when inordi- 
nately aroused, that the influence of reason 
appears suspended by an induced temporary 
insanity, and the animal thus affected, is often 
involuntarily and irresistibly impelled into the 
danger which it is its object to avoid, feuch 
is often the effect of this blind passion, that 
safety (which is the object of its specific 
action) becomes sacrificed in the bewildering 
vortex created by its deranging influence. 

In the explanation of the phenomena of 
apparent fascination, what more rational can 
be given, or what more accordant with the 
state of facts presented, than that which is 
capable of being derived from the optical phe- 
nomena alluded to, aided by the physical 
effects susceptible of being induced by fear, 
when in a state of extreme stimulation ? It is 
principally the most formidable reptiles, such 



ANIMAL FASCINATION. 189 

as the crotilus horrida, or rattlesnake, the 
cobra, or hooded snake, and a few others of the 
most venomous character, and therefore the 
most excitant to fear, which are supposed to 
be invested with the power of charming. This 
fact is worthy of being borne in mind in the 
explanation of the phenomena of fascination, 
as here proposed to be given. 

The variegated colors of most poisonous 
reptiles, as the rattlesnake, &c, are adequate 
to explain the reputed dazzling and changing 
hues, said to be presented by the charmer to 
the charmed, during the unaverted view which 
his situation would be likely to elicit, and 
which, it is understood, is an indispensable 
condition for the operation of the fascinating 
influence, No condition can be conceived 
more favorable for the presentation of the 
above noticed ocular phenomena, or none in 
which the bewildering effects of fear would be 
more likely to be induced, than that in which 
the timid are placed, when in dangerous prox- 
imity with so formidable a foe as a deadly 
reptile. The intense gaze, with an extremely 
excited imagination, would not only be likely 
to confer intensity on the ever-changing hues 
of the ocular spectrae presented to the aston- 
ished vision, but the deranging influence of 
fear would, doubtless, be manifested in the 
17 



190 ANIMAL FASCINATION. 

excitable subject, to a degree rarely effected 
from any other causes. 

It may even be conceived, that the visual 
changes of hue, to those unacquainted with 
their true character, (particularly in the ner- 
vously susceptible,) might be adequate to the 
production of a temporary distraction of the 
intellect. But when, in addition, we have to 
consider the accessory aid which these influen- 
ces acquire from the engrossing affection of 
fear, it is not surprising that such concurrence 
should be productive of a temporary suspension 
of all the faculties of the mind, or that they 
should suffer derangement to such a degree as 
to cause them to act in contravention, both to 
the salutary decisions of reason and the or- 
dinary promptings of the instinct of self-pre- 
servation. 

The physiological effects of colors alluded 
to, would unquestionably be greatly enhanced 
under circumstances of great excitement from 
terror, originating from objects of vision, and 
in all cases would be Jikely to act as a sub- 
sidiary disturbing cause to that emotion, so 
efficient in influencing mental action. More 
especially might this be expected, when, in 
addition to the necessary requisite, an una- 
verted gaze, was that of mental excitation to 
the extent of abstracting the attention and 
concentrating it upon the exciting object. In 



ANIMAL FASCINATION. 191 

connection, therefore, with the extreme opera- 
tion of the passion, fear, there can be no doubt* 
but the influence of this phenomenon would 
bear a prominent agency, and essentially 
modify the results ordinarily produced by the 
former ; but it is assumed, that it acts merely 
as an adjunct to the engrossing passion, to 
which all the principal effects are to be at- 
tributed. That the popular notion ot ex- 
tremely dazzling hues, with their enticing 
influences, said to be presented by the fasci- 
nator to his victim, are in a great degree 
fictitious exaggerations, is most probable ; but 
that the former actually occurs in some cases 
of human subjects, when excited by a formi- 
dable reptile, is not inconsistent with the opti- 
cal facts alluded to, and therefore may have 
been actually represented. 

As further proof that the apparently varie- 
gated colors, which are reputed to surround 
the fascinator, are but natural optical illusions 
of the subject of his influence, in the presen- 
tation of which the former is an entirely pas- 
sive agent, may be adduced the fact, that the 
inferior animals, which are far the most fre- 
quent victims of the supposed charm, proba- 
bly possess in no considerable degree a per- 
ception of the beauty of colors. And as it is 
evident that they are but slightly, if at all, en- 
dowed with sentiment and imagination, on 



192 ANIMAL FASCINATION. 

which the finer sensibilities are dependent, it 
•cannot be these influences upon the intellect 
that essentially effect the fatal results. 

Whatever, therefore, may be the character 
of the affection termed fascination, whether 
excited, as is asserted in the human species, by 
serpents, or in minor animals, as squirrels, 
birds, &c, by the same, as well as animals of 
the feline species, it is reasonable to suppose 
that the mental influence is the same by which 
their powers are involuntarily brought into 
subjection to their deadly foes. 

It is extremely probable, as before asserted, 
that in all cases of apparent affection by the 
power in question, whether proceeding from 
reptiles or other animals, it is a sense of their 
formidable attributes which alone impresses 
the intellect of the victim. It is, therefore, 
evidently the impression made by fear upon 
the mental faculties, which mainly effects such 
bewildering and exhausting derangement as 
to deprive the intellect of the ability to exer- 
cise its ordinary pro visionary caution, and 
impels to dangers which its unbiased action 
ever admonishes to avoid. 

Fear is a passion with which all animals, 
but more especially the weaker, are endow- 
ed ; the final cause of which is self-protec- 
tion and preservation. In cases of danger, 
when aided by the deliberative faculties, it 



ANIMAL FASCINATION. 193 

adopts the most efficacious means for the ac- 
complishment of this important object. The 
design of the endowment is the same in all ani- 
mals, whether made subject to reason or in- 
stinct, and as its object is to prompt to efforts 
for safety in danger, where the deliberative 
faculties would often be inefficient, its action 
is often simultaneous with the sense of peril 
by which it is stimulated. But it occasionally 
happens that the extreme effects of the emo- 
tion is so powerful, from an instant sense of 
the magnitude of danger presented, that the 
salutary provision, caution, becomes paralyzed 
and inoperative, or the action which it insti- 
tutes becomes so perverted, that its final aims 
are frustrated. The faculties of the mind 
and admonitory instincts, are prostrated to a 
degree, that they are unable to institute salu- 
tary decisions, and the entire animal impulses 
act with an incongruity which presents them 
as destructive, rather than salutary monitors.* 



* A much esteemed friend of the author, of accom- 
plished mind and high attainments in the legal pro- 
fession, of a nervous temperament and delicate health, 
in a conversation on the influence of extreme fear, in- 
formed him that, on overlooking a precipice, an in- 
voluntary impulse ever prompted him to pass over the 
declivity, although, in the act, inevitable destruction was 
depicted. An experience of similar impressions, from 
a sudden view of like danger, has not unfrequently been 

17* 



194 ANIMAL FASCINATION. 

Instances in illustration of the effects of 
the extreme action of the passions and emo- 
tions, but more especially that of fear, may, 



stated to the author, and probably is not unfamiliar to 
the reader. The melancholy death of a lady, the wife 
of a distinguished clergyman, at Trenton Falls, a few 
years since, by a precipitation into the chasm and 
waters beneath, has been imputed to the influence men- 
tioned, and, perhaps, affords the most satisfactory ex- 
planation of that mysterious event. The deranging 
influence of the strong and sudden emotion of fear, as 
well on the senses as the mind, is thus beautifully illus- 
trated by Shakspeare's description of Dover Cliffs : 



' How fearful 



And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low ! 
The crows and choughs, that wing the midway air, 
Shew scarce so gross as beetles. Half way down 
Hangs one that gathers samphire ; dreadful trade ! 
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head. 
The fishermen that walk upon the beach, 
Appear like mice ; and yon tall anchoring bark, 
Diminish'd to her cock ; her cock, a buoy, 
Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge, 
That on th' unnumber'd idle pebhles chafes, 
Cannot, be heard so high. I'll look no more, 
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight 
Topple down headlong." 

These facts, in illustration of the influence of sudden 
fear, in effecting derangement of the mental faculties, 
are appropriate evidence to show that the same influ- 
ence, aided by the circumstances mentioned in the text, 
are adequate to explain the phenomena, as well as their 
effects, witnessed in the apparent state of charming by 
animals. 

Anger, as a passion nearly allied to fear, as regards 
its instantaneous operation on the mind, when stimulated 
by unexpected occasions for its action, often effects 



ANIMAL FASCINATION. 195 

• 

to any extent, be adduced. Thus the human 
mother will plunge into fire or water, to grasp 
her infant perishing in those elements, thought- 
less of the consequences to her own safety. 
Death is often sought, and effected, in the 
extreme distractions of grief, in counteraction 
of the instinctive love of life ; and despair, 
from sudden and irretrievable losses, often 
impels to a voluntary self-immolation. Many 
animals, in extreme and sudden fright, in their 
attempts for safety, often destroy their lives 
by the incautious means employed. The par- 
tridge often plunges against buildings or trees, 
by which its destruction is effected, when ex- 
cited by an instant representation of danger. 
The horse refuses to leave his burning stall, 
and if compelled to a place of safety, rushes 
back to destruction, when not secured by res- 
traint. Various other instances of the disas- 
trous effects of excessive and sudden fear 
might be mentioned, but it is presumed that 
they will readily be suggested to the reader. 
Indeed, general observation will attest, that 



temporary derangement of the faculties. In this state 
the mind becomes so deprived of the power of delibera- 
tion, as to produce like disastrous results with the latter. 
Both, when stimulated by sudden and inordinate causes, 
are often converted into the most destructive agents, 
thereby becoming perversive of the objects for which 
they were manifestly designed by the Creator. 



196 ANIMAL FASCINATION. 

both instinct and intellect, the natural con- 
servative agents of life, often become the most 
ready instruments for its destruction, when 
dangers are presented in attitudes that dis- 
concert the influence which they ordinarily 
hold over their dependent organs. 

All animals are endowed with admonito- 
ry instincts, which prompt to the embrace 
of appropriate means for securing a supply of 
their systematic wants, as well as for the pro- 
tection of themselves and their offspring. — 
This monitor, doubtless, directs some animals, 
such as the reputed charuiers, or those that 
prey upon the weaker species, to excite in 
their intended victims the extreme emotion of 
fear, for the purpose of their arrest ; either by 
assuming before them a terrific attitude, there- 
by directly disconcerting their powers of es- 
cape, by the overwhelming influences of instant 
jeopardy ; or it directs them to seek a posi- 
tion in the vicinity of their young progeny, 
to excite apprehension for the safety of these, 
and thereby induce an exhausting struggle in 
their defense. 

This induced exertion, aided by the dis- 
tracting influence of parental solicitude, while 
it renders them reckless of individual safety, 
effects an exhaustion of their bodily powers 
that not unfrequently terminates in their fall- 



ANIMAL FASCINATION. 197 

ing. victims to parental affection.* Even the 
school boy will attest to the bold and perse- 
vering efforts of the most timid parent bird, 
in the resistance made to his incursions upon 
the domain of her progeny, and the daring 
exposures of her individual safety in their de- 
fense. But when the danger arises from her 
natural enemy, the reptile or the cat, her ef- 
forts are increased in reckless daring, to a 
degree proportionate to her instinctive con- 
sciousness of the deadly designs of the adver- 
sary. The wily intruder, sensible that per- 
severance will most likely effect his design, 
patiently awaits the period when, through ex- 
haustion, or wild desperation, she ventures 
within his grasp. 



* The love of offspring, as often manifested in the 
human and other species, often equals that of life, and 
when brought into conflict, the former not unfrequently 
predominates. When extremely aroused by imminent 
perils to which its object is exposed, it often prompts to 
effort for protection, equally vigorous and daring as 
when personal safety is the consideration. This strong 
and engrossing passion is most manifest in animals 
when their young are in the stage of rearing, in which 
helpless state few animals will abandon them when en- 
dangered by their natural or other foes, until resistance 
becomes hopeless by their destruction, or their own 
powers yield, through their protracted struggles in their 
defense. 



198 ANIMAL FASCINATION. 

That the asserted fascinator is a passive 
agent in effecting the changes acting upon 
the victim of his influence, either in present- 
ing variable hues, or other factitious represen- 
tations deviating from those originating from 
ordinary animal endowments, is rendered 
certain from the fact, that the more calm and 
indifferent beholder witnesses no deviation 
whatever, either in his ordinary colors, or 
other natural qualities, any further than those 
which his ordinary instinct, or experience, 
might suggest as most suitably adapted for the 
arrest of his prey. 

Every species of animals evidently possess 
instincts operating in some degree diverse from 
those of others, which are to be viewed as wise 
adaptations to the wants and abilities of the or- 
ganic structure of their possessors. That the 
few species, therefore, represented as charmers, 
should exhibit actions, when employed in pro- 
curing sustenance, deviating from others of a 
different organization, need not surprise the 
observer of general animal nature, since sim- 
ilar deviations in animal attributes will be 
found characterizing most other kinds, which, 
if less marvelous in consequence of being view- 
ed as immediate stuctural operations, are no 
less mysterious and inexplicable. If many of 
these have not been referred to a power hav- 
ing no sensibly material origin, like that of 



ANIMAL FASCINATION. 199 

the conceived power of fascination, it is proba- 
bly for the reason, that their accompanying 
phenomena have failed to impress the mind 
with the requisite marvels and mysteries 
which the latter is better calculated to gene- 
rate. Such mysterious character is proved by 
all observation to be a necessary aliment to 
sustain a belief in whatever is obscure, incom- 
prehensible, and difficult of investigation by 
the senses. 

The power under consideration, in the 
light in which it has been presented, admits 
of explanation, as an ordinary faculty, either 
by viewing it as an original sagacity supplied 
by intellect or instinct, or that these have been 
improved by the experience of a long succes- 
sion of their species, in localities and under 
circumstances deviating from those for which 
their original natures were destined. 

This improvement and accommodation of 
animal attributes, as well instinct as intel- 
lect, is exhibited in most species when trans- 
lated to situations in which the natural ob- 
jects on which they subsist are deficient. As 
it is an obvious fact, that most kinds of ani- 
mals, from various accidents, have been exten- 
sively dispersed from their original locations, 
there is great reason for believing that many 
kinds have acquired greater or less additions 
to the sagacities with which they were origi- 
nally supplied, 



200 ANIMAL FASCINATION. 

A reference to either or both of the above 
suppositions, may afford an explanation of the 
artful sagacity which leads serpents, or other 
supposed charming animals, to locations where 
their contemplated victims are employed in 
the rearing of offspring, that by exciting the 
conflicting instincts in the manner stated, they 
may be subdued by the artful device, and the 
captor be enabled to secure a supply of his 
wants from a source that his natural organic 
abilities would seem to render him otherwise 
hopeless of obtaining. In a physiological view 
of the subject, therefore, the conclusion, from 
the state of facts, is nearly imperative, that the 
reputed state of fascination, with all its at- 
tendant phenomena, is but a mental, or per- 
haps in the lower species, an instinctive be- 
wilderment, effected by the deranging action 
of extreme passion. This may, perhaps, be 
aided in some cases by the optical illusions 
noticed, when in dangerous proximity with a 
formidable and deadly foe, in which state a 
lively sense of imminent peril so operates 
upon the intellect, as to produce a temporary 
hallucination or derangement of the natural 
faculties, or so disorders the action of the self- 
protective instincts, as for a time to abolish 
the ordinary physical ability to secure safety. 
In this condition the victim is impelled, in- 
voluntarily, to rush into the formidable danger, 
(by a striking sense of which, the deranged 



AMIMAL FASCINATION. 201 

state of the intellect has been induced,) even 
against the admonition of the will and the 
instincts, which, in a state of deliberation, 
promptly admonish a retreat from its precincts. 

If, therefore, all the actions of animals in 
the assumed state of fascination, as well as 
those by which this condition is induced, are 
susceptible of a reference to the operation of 
their ordinary but generally incomprehensible 
instincts, passions and intellect, it certainly is 
more rational to resort to the intricate though 
admitted organic action that originate these, 
for an explanation of the celebrated phenom- 
ena, than to refer them to a still more inexpli- 
cable and incomprehensible power, the exist- 
ence of which is a mere assumption from a 
series of extraordinary actions witnessed, to 
which are imputed energies capable of being 
operative far beyond the ordinary organic or 
physical force of the agent by which they are 
exerted. 

In the intricate phenomena of nature, it is 
altogether more philosophical to have recourse 
to known facts, and where these are deficient, 
to analogies, for their solution, than by aban- 
doning such, because inadequate for their en- 
tire explanation, to assume the existence of 
animal properties which neither matter or 
mind are known to possess. Indeed, this must 
be conceded as the only justifiable mode of 

18 



202 ANIMAL FASCINATION. 

reasoning, especially when the opposing facts 
are mere conceivable existences, incapable of 
being reconciled with any of the recognized 
laws by which either are governed. 

The above being an admitted position, it 
of course follows, that if the facts apparent in 
the assumed state of fascination are suscepti- 
ble of an explanation, as being ordinary mani- 
festations of instinct, passion, or intellect, with 
one or all of which every animal is evidently 
endowed, it is unphilosophical to reject these 
ordinary animal properties in attempting its 
solution, for the reason only that they may ap- 
pear inadequate to explain its minor phenom- 
ena. This view is far more rational than that 
which admits a new agency for its production, 
which neither holds a similitude with any of 
the affections admitted as legitimate animal 
attributes, nor in fact is susceptible of being 
derived from any known property or law of 
animal nature. 

If such a principle is admitted as legitimate 
in the science of life, there is reason to appre- 
hend that the truths dependent upon physiolo- 
gical science will be involved in obscurity ; 
and, indeed, that the natural sciences generally, 
instead of arriving at the state of development 
which their friends and cultivators have anti- 
cipated, are in danger of failing in their at- 
tainment of that exactness from which their 
greatest utility can be derived. 



CONCLUSION. 

It is to be regretted that, in this enlightened 
age, the propensity for the novel and the mar- 
velous should be permitted so far to obscure 
reason and judgment, as to prevent a reference 
to known phenomena or facts, for an explana- 
tion of whatever appears new, strange, or mys- 
terious ; more especially when such is opposed 
to all sensible and rational experience. 

The various illusions of the senses, and the 
impositions which have ever been practiced to 
deceive mankind in less enlightened ages, 
ought to admonish us not to give our assent 
to pretended discoveries or speciously con- 
structed systems, which are discordant with 
common observation and general experience, 
without a deliberate examination. By a neglect 
of such caution, there is danger that evils sim- 
ilar to those alluded to, as having been instru- 
mental in earlier periods in retarding man- 
kind in their progress toward true knowledge, 
should have the like effect on the present age. 
Every age has had its peculiar superstitions 
and objects of credulity, which have flourished 
and held a duration proportionate to the ability 
of their promulgators to sustain their character 
for novelty, and the drapery of mystery which 



204 CONCLUSION. 

concealed their deformities. This essential 
aliment to credulity has been well understood 
and applied by designing knaves and impos- 
tors, to obtain the ends of their unholy ambi- 
tion ; and observation too clearly manifests the 
success which has attended their experiments 
on popular credulity. To attest this fact re- 
quires but a reference to the attention and 
popular approbation with which the pretended 
discoveries alluded to are generally received. 
Such are the varieties of nostrums and pana- 
ceas of the quack, of mesmerism, of fanatical 
sects in religion, together with the almost in- 
finite variety of other worthless inventions and 
fictions of the imagination, which knavery is 
perpetually devising, and which are thrust 
upon the public by their inventors with an ar- 
rogance and impudence unparalleled, except 
in the history of charlatanism. 

These are too commonly grasped with avid- 
ity by the devotees of novelty, to the no small 
detriment of their interests and intellectual 
claims. 

Each nostrum or superstition enjoys, in turn, 
a period of ascendency sufficient to accom- 
plish the selfish object which led the impostor 
to its invention. Each has succeeded in a de- 
gree proportioned to the ability of its inventor 
to sustain its occult character, and each inva- 
riably has declined in a ratio having corres- 



CONCLUSION. 205 

pondence with the loss of this essential re- 
quisite for success. 

Such is the uniform character which history 
and observation furnishes of credulity and su- 
perstition, and such the arts and machinations 
with which designing impostors, in every age, 
have approached the weak and the credulous, 
with designs upon their interest and welfare. 
It may well then be asked, whether, in an en- 
lightened period like the present, with exam- 
ples so abounding as those furnished from past 
ages, the time has not arrived when it would 
be proper to review our position by the light 
which the past furnishes ; and before we ridi- 
cule past generations for their errors and delu- 
sions, furnish evidence that we, though per- 
haps in other forms, are not in a like category, 
and therefore in danger of being jeered in turn 
by our successors, for the errors which we 
foster and cherish. 

If such happy result as the banishment of 
error from the entire mass of society is ever 
accomplished, it can alone be effected by 
allowing reason a legitimate predominance 
over the passions and imagination, that it may 
be enabled to separate truth from falsehood, 
by the standards which it is capable of fur- 
nishing. Such exercise of reason, aided by 
experience and a healthy operation of the 
senses, would divest knavery and imposture of 
18* 



206 CONCLUSION. 

their mystery and marvelousness ; and the 
impostors, who weave their detestable fabrics, 
would be shorn of their ability to prey upon 
the interests and happiness of the species in 
which they claim a rank. By allowing the 
native faculties of the mind this salutary exer- 
cise, a* test might be afforded by which the 
line of demarkation between truth and error 
would be defined ; reason would assume the 
governance of mental action ; impostors, with 
their arts and delusive systems, would be con- 
signed to merited obloquy ; and the progress 
of society would be onward toward that per- 
fection for which the Creator manifestly de- 
signed the human species. 



THE END. 



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Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Nov. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 









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